Optics pioneers scoop Nobel prize

Oct 6, 2009 2 comments
Three physicists from China, the US and Canada have picked up this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. The SEK10m prize has been shared between Charles Kao from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Willard Boyle and George Smith, both from Bell Laboratories, US.

Kao has won half the prize for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication". Boyle and Smith each receive a quarter of the prize for "the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor".

In a press release, the Nobel committee stated that "Digital photography has become an irreplaceable tool in many fields of research. The CCD has provided new possibilities to visualize the previously unseen. It has given us crystal clear images of distant places in our universe as well as the depths of the oceans." They also said that "Today, optical fibres make up the circulatory system that nourishes our communication society. These low-loss glass fibers facilitate global broadband communication such as the Internet."


Willard Boyle and George Smith
The Nobel prize was established by the 1895 will of Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel with the first prizes handed out in 1901. The prize is awarded each year to outstanding contributions in physics, chemistry, medicine, economics, literature and peace.

Willard Boyle was born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, on 19 August 1924. He served in the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War and then attended McGill University, receiving a PhD in physics in 1950. He spent most of his career at Bell Labs in New Jersey, where he was executive director of research of the Communications Sciences Division, before retiring in 1979. He is a Canadian and US citizen.


Charles KaoGeorge Smith was born in New York on 10 May 1930. He obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Chicago in 1959 after which he joined Bell Labs as a research scientist. In 1964 he became head of the device concepts department at Bell Labs, where he spent the rest of his career until he retired in 1986. His department led research into lasers and semiconductor devices and it is here where he invented the charge-coupled device together with Boyle.

Charles Kao was born on 4 November 1933 in Shanghai, China. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from Imperial College London in 1965 and is now a British and US citizen. Kao served as director of engineering at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories based in Harlow, UK, where he demonstrated that light rather than electricity could be used to transmit speech. He then served as the vice chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1987 to 1996.

More to follow soon.

About the author
Michael Banks is news editor of Physics World


Read more here.....

Optics pioneers scoop Nobel prize - physicsworld.com

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Nobel honours 'masters of light'