Engineering Education “Today in History” Blog: Maiman builds the first ruby laser
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (604) · May 16th, 2008 · Add a Comment
Today in History -May 16, 1960 – Theodore Maiman develops the first ruby laser, one of the first functional optical lasers while at the Hughes Aircraft Company. Maiman (left photo) was influenced by articles by Charles H. Townes at al.: J.P. Gordon, H. J. Zeiger and C.H. Townes, Physics Review, 95 (1954) 282 and J. P. Gordon, H. J. Zeiger and C. H. Townes, Physics Review, 99 (1955) 1264.
There appears to have been quite a competition between Maiman and Townes (photo second from left) in developing the first functional laser. Townes patented the maser (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) on March 24, 1959, using ammonia gas and microwave radiation – a laser that doesn’t use optical light. Although Maiman was nominated for a Nobel prize, the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Charles Townes (50%) and Basov and Prokhorov (each 25%). Maiman was awarded 1983/84 Wolf Prize in Physics and the Japan Prize in 1987. He also holds patents on masers, laser displays, optical scanning, and laser modulation. Until his recent death on May 5, 2007, Maiman served as director of the Control Laser Corporation and a member of the advisory board of Industrial Research Magazine.
Gordon Gould was the first person to use the word “laser” (Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation). And he may have created the first light laser. As a doctoral student at Columbia University under Charles Townes, he built an optical laser starting in 1958 but failed to file for a patent for his invention until after other laser researchers had filed their own patents. In 1997 after many legal battles, Gould was awarded the first patent for the laser. He was inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 1991.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s educational resources on applied physics or view our Electrical Engineering Education community site.
Tags: Electrical Engineering · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Physics
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