Daily Almanac for
Nov 11, 2009
Search White Pages
Search: Infoplease Info search tips
Search: Biographies Bio search tips
Encyclopedia

Townes, Charles Hard

Townes, Charles Hard, 1915–, American physicist and educator, b. Greenville, S.C. He was educated at Furman Univ., Duke, and the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1939), was on the technical staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories (1939–48), and taught at Columbia (1948–59). After serving as vice president and director of research of the Institute for Defense Analyses, Washington, D.C., he was provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1961–66). Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with N. G. Basov and A. M. Prokhorov for contributions to this field.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

    • Cite
    • Print
    • Bookmark

More on Charles Hard Townes from Infoplease:

See more Encyclopedia articles on: Physics: Biographies