Volume 2, Issue 13
Berkeley's Scientific Legacy
Charles Townes and the Amazing Light
Charles Townes was married in 1941 to the former Frances H. Brown of Berlin, New Hampshire. They have four daughters--Linda, Ellen, Carla, and Holly. (BAP photos)
When UC Berkeley professor Charles H. Townes took his first physics course as an undergraduate in the early 1930s, he was fascinated by the "beautifully logical structure" of the discipline. That enchantment would lead Townes on a lifelong investigation into the very nature of reality and develop new tools to aid in the quest. In 1964, Townes shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for his role in the invention of the laser. On October 6-8, Townes's 90th birthday year will be celebrated with Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery, an international symposium at UC Berkeley where some of the greatest minds in physics and cosmology, including 18 Nobel Laureates, will explore the awe-inspiring challenges in twenty-first century science. A lifelong believer in the commonalities between science and religion, Townes received this year's $1.5 million Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities.
Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1915 and completed a B.S. in physics and B.A. in modern languages from Furman University. After earning his M.A. in physics from Duke University and his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, Townes worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories during World War II designing radar bombing systems. Later, he began to apply what he had learned about microwaves during the wartime effort to spectroscopy, analyzing the composition of materials by looking at the light emitted.
In 1953 while on the faculty at Columbia University, he conceived of the MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), a device that produces a focused beam of energy in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Townes says the notion came to him in the form of a "revelation" while sitting on a park bench. Then, in 1958, Townes and his brother-in-law A. L. Schawlow, theoretically demonstrated the LASER (Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation), essentially an optical MASER that produces an incredibly focused beam of light at a specific wavelength. The laser would quickly revolutionize a myriad of fields, from medicine to industry to telecommunications.
After several years as vice president and director of research at the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, DC, Townes joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize, with Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov of the Lebedev Institute for Physics, Moscow, "for fundamental work in quantum electronics which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle."
In 1967, Townes was appointed University Professor at the University of California. Based at UC Berkeley, his research continues, now focused on astrophysics. He is the recipient of dozens of prestigious awards, most recently the 2005 Templeton Prize, honoring the advancement of knowledge in spiritual matters.
"My own view is that, while science and religion may seem different, they have many similarities, and should interact and enlighten each other," Townes wrote in a statement accepting the prize. "Science tries to understand what our universe is like and how it works, including us humans. Religion is aimed at understanding the purpose and meaning of our universe, including our own lives. If the universe has a purpose or meaning, this must be reflected in its structure and functioning, and hence in science."
Honoring Townes's vision as a scientist, the upcoming symposium, Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery, will illuminate the creative edges of the experimental (observational) aspects of physics and cosmology on the path to new discoveries and the development of instruments that may transform human life.