Theodore Harold Maiman

American physicist (1927–)

Maiman, the son of an electrical engineer, was born in Los Angeles, California, and graduated in engineering physics from the University of Colorado in 1949. He gained his PhD from Stanford University in 1955, following which he joined the Hughes Research Laboratories, Miami.

Maiman was especially interested in the maser, which had been developed independently by Charles Townes in America and Nikolai Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov in the USSR in 1955. It was realized that the principles by which the maser produced microwaves at selected well-defined wavelengths could be extended to emissions at the shorter visible wavelengths. In 1960, at the Hughes Research Laboratory, Maiman designed and operated the first instrument to achieve this, now known as the laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). He used a ruby cylinder with mirror-coated ends as a resonant cavity, and succeeded in converting flashes of white (incoherent) light into a pulsed beam of monochromatic coherent light. Such a beam can travel long distances with little dispersion and can concentrate optical energy on a small spot. The first continuous (as opposed to pulsed) laser was made by Ali Javan and his colleagues at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1961. The laser has since been developed in many forms as a research and engineering tool.

Maiman founded his own company, Korad Corporation, in 1962, which became the leading developer and manufacturer of high-power lasers. He founded Maiman Associates in 1968, acting as a consultant on lasers and optics, and cofounded the Laser Video Corporation in 1972. In 1977 he joined TRW Electronics of California as assistant for advanced technology.

Theodore Harold Maiman
Theodore Harold Maiman.
Born	July 11 1927(1927--) Los Angeles, California
Died	May 5 2007 (aged 79) Vancouver, British Columbia
Residence	USA
Citizenship	American
Field	Physics
Institutions	Hughes Research Laboratories Quantatron
Alma mater	University of Colorado
Known for	Laser
Notable prizes	Wolf Prize in Physics (1983) Japan Prize (1987)

Theodore Harold "Ted" Maiman (July 11, 1927 - May 5, 2007) was an American physicist who made the first working laser. ^[1] Maiman received the Japan Prize in 1987. He was the author of a book titled The Laser Odyssey.

Life and career

Maiman was born in Los Angeles.^[2]In his teens, Maiman earned college money by repairing electrical appliances and radios. He attended the University of Colorado and received a B.S. in engineering physics in 1949 then went on to do graduate work at Stanford University, where he received an M.S. in electrical engineering in 1951 and a Ph.D. in physics in 1955.

Maiman's laser, based on a synthetic ruby crystal grown by Dr. Ralph L. Hutcheson, was first operated on 16 May 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. After a protracted legal battle, some key laser patents were awarded to Gordon Gould.

After leaving Hughes, Maiman joined Quantatron where he was in charge of the laser activities. In 1962 Maiman became president of the newly formed Korad Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Carbide. Union Carbide bought the laser assets owned by Quantatron. Korad was devoted to the research, development, and manufacture of lasers. He formed Maiman Associates in 1968 after selling Korad to Union Carbide Corporation

Due to his work on the laser, he was twice nominated for a Nobel Prize^[3] and was given membership in both the National Academies of Science and Engineering. He received the Oliver E. Buckley Prize in 1966. He was the recipient of the 1983/84 Wolf Prize in Physics, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame that same year.

Maiman died from systemic mastocytosis on May 5, 2007 in Vancouver, Canada, where he lived with his wife.^[4]

References

1. ^ U.S. Patent  
2. ^ Johnson, John, Jr. (May 11, 2007). Theodore H. Maiman, 79; scientist built the first laser. Los Angeles Times
3. ^ Douglas Martin. "Maiman built world's first laser", New York Times, 2007-05-11. 
4. ^ Douglas, Martin (May 11, 2007). Theodore Maiman, 79, Dies; Demonstrated First Laser New York Times

External links

• Theodore H. Maiman via IEEE Virtual Museum

Wolf Prize in Physics Laureates
Chien-Shiung Wu (1978) • George Uhlenbeck / Giuseppe Occhialini (1979) • Michael Fisher / Leo Kadanoff / Kenneth G. Wilson (1980) • Freeman Dyson / Gerardus 't Hooft / Victor Weisskopf (1981) • Leon M. Lederman / Martin Lewis Perl (1982) • Erwin Hahn / Peter Hirsch / Theodore Maiman (1983) • Conyers Herring / Philippe Nozieres (1984) • Mitchell Feigenbaum / Albert J. Libchaber (1986) • Herbert Friedman / Bruno Rossi / Riccardo Giacconi (1987) • Roger Penrose / Stephen Hawking (1988) • Pierre-Gilles de Gennes / David J. Thouless (1990) • Maurice Goldhaber / Valentine Telegdi (1991) • Joseph H. Taylor, Jr. (1992) • Benoît Mandelbrot (1993) • Vitaly Ginzburg / Yoichiro Nambu (1994) • John Wheeler (1997) • Yakir Aharonov / Michael Berry (1998) • Dan Shechtman (1999) • Raymond Davis, Jr. / Masatoshi Koshiba (2000) • Bertrand Halperin / Anthony Leggett (2002) • Robert Brout / François Englert / Peter Higgs (2004) • Daniel Kleppner (2005) • Albert Fert / Peter Grünberg (2006)
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be-x-old:Тэадор Мэйман

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