Ali Javan

Ali Mortimer Javan (Persian: علی جوان‎ - ‘Ali Javān, Azerbaijani: علی جوان, born December 26, 1926) is an Iranian American physicist and inventor at MIT. His main contributions to science have been in the fields of quantum physics and spectroscopy. He co-invented the gas laser in 1960, with William R. Bennett.^[1] Ali Javan has been ranked Number 12 on the list of the Top 100 living geniuses.^[2]

Biography

Ali Javan was born in Tehran to Iranian Azeri parents from Tabriz.^[3] He graduated from Alborz High School, started his university studies at University of Tehran and came to the United States in 1948 right after the war. He received his PhD in physics in 1954 from Columbia University under his thesis advisor Charles Townes. In 1955 Javan held a position as a Post Doctoral in the Radiation Laboratory and worked with Townes on the atomic clock research, and used the microwave atom beam spectrometer to study the hyperfine structure of atoms like copper and thalium.

In 1957 he published a paper on how to induce gain and amplification effect resonantly in a three-level system without inducing inversion in the energy states.^[4] Following this body of work in the three-level maser systems, he discovered how it is possible to obtain gain and amplification effect in the Raman transitions without inversion. He joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1958 shortly after he conceived the working principle of his gas discharge Helium Neon laser device and predicted its significance.

At MIT in the early 1960s, Ali Javan started a research project aimed at extending microwave frequency-measuring techniques into the infrared, he then developed the first absolutely accurate measurement of the speed of light.^[5]

Javan first worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an associate professor of physics in 1961 and has remained Francis Wright Davis Professor Emeritus of physics since 1964. ^[6] His contributions to nanophotonics included the introduction of the concept of an optical antenna of several wavelengths long which enables the near-complete confinement of an incident optical field coupled to it, and forming the antenna in nanoscale.

He is married and has two daughters with his wife Marjorie.

The gas laser

The gas laser was the first continuous-light laser and the first laser to operate "on the principle of converting electrical energy to a laser light output." By definition, "a gas laser is a laser in which an electric current is discharged through a gas to produce light." Ali Javan received U.S. patent #3,149,290 together with William Bennett for the "Gas Optical Maser". Ali Javan first tested his invention on December 12, 1960.

Laser beam transmission

On December 13, 1960, the first telephone conversation using laser beam transmission occurred. Ali Javan describes the moment: "I put in a call to the lab. One of the team members answered and asked me to hold the line for a moment. Then I heard a voice [Mr. Balik], somewhat quivering in transmission, telling me that it was the laser light speaking to me."^[7]

Importance of the gas laser

The gas laser laid the foundation for fiber optic communication. Laser telecommunication via fiber optics is known to be the key technology used in today's Internet.^[8] Helium-Neon gas lasers were the first lasers to be mass-produced. They were used in everything from UPC checkout scanners, video disc players to medical and monitoring technologies and laser printers. Although they have been largely replaced by diode-pumped solid state lasers and laser diodes, they are now used principally for specialized applications such as interferometry and holography due to their long coherence length and Gaussian irradiance profile.

Honours

• Member of Sigma Xi
• National Academy of Sciences Fellow
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow
• 1964 - Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute for "conception and development of the first continuous optical laser which utilised Neon and Helium"
• 1966 - Fanny and John Hertz Foundation Medal
• 1966 - Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
• 1975 - Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America
• 1979 - Humboldt Foundation Fellowship
• 1993 - Albert Einstein World Award of Science of the World Cultural Council
• 2006 - Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

See also

• MIT Physics Department
• List of Iranian scholars
• Higher Education in Iran

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Trafton, Anne (2006-02-09). "Inventors Hall of Fame to Induct Two Professors". MIT News Office. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/inventors.html. Retrieved 2006-11-11. 

External links

• US Patent 3,149,290
• Biography
• "Ali Javan, Scientists Who Made A Difference: The Gas Laser and Beyond," in Azerbaijan International. Vol. 4:2 (Summer 1996), pp. 14-19
• His profile on National Inventors Hall of Fame website
• in Persian
• Ali Javan: History of laser