Schawlow, Arthur Leonard
Schawlow, Arthur Leonard
(shô`lō), 1921–99, American physicist, b. Mount Vernon, N.Y., grad. Univ. of Toronto (Ph.D. 1949). Although his research focused on optics, in particular, laserslaser[acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation], device for the creation, amplification, and transmission of a narrow, intense beam of coherent light. The laser is sometimes referred to as an optical maser.
..... Click the link for more information. and their use in spectroscopy, he also pursued investigations in the areas of superconductivitysuperconductivity,
abnormally high electrical conductivity of certain substances. The phenomenon was discovered in 1911 by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, who found that the resistance of mercury dropped suddenly to zero at a temperature of about 4.
..... Click the link for more information. and nuclear resonance. Upon graduating from college he worked with Charles TownesTownes, Charles Hard,
1915–2015, American physicist and educator, b. Greenville, S.C. He was educated at Furman Univ., Duke, and the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D.
..... Click the link for more information. at Columbia Univ. in developing the masermaser
, device for creation, amplification, and transmission of an intense, highly focused beam of high-frequency radio waves. The name maser is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of r
..... Click the link for more information. . Schawlow joined the staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he studied superconductivity while continuing to collaborate with Townes on research that led to the development of the laser, and in 1961 joined the faculty of Stanford Univ., where he spent the remainder of his career. Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in physics with Nicolaas BloembergenBloembergen, Nicolaas
, 1920–2017, American physicist, b. Dordrecht, the Netherlands. Educated in the Netherlands, he began work at Harvard in 1946, first as a research assistant and later as a professor and then university professor (emeritus from 1990).
..... Click the link for more information. and Kai SiegbahnSiegbahn, Kai Manne Borje,
1918–2007, Swedish physicist, son of Karl Siegbahn. He earned his doctorate at the Univ. of Stockholm in 1944 and later taught at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (1951–54), and the Univ. of Uppsala (1954–84).
..... Click the link for more information. for their their contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy. Schawlow coauthored Microwave Spectroscopy (1955) with Townes.