U.S. physicist Charles Townes, whose research on controlling electromagnetic waves led to the development of the laser, died Tuesday at the age of 99 in California.
Townes first conceived of the idea in 1951 while a working as a researcher at New York’s Columbia University. Three years later, he and a team of graduate students developed the first device that operated on this theory.
Since then, lasers have been utilized in virtually every aspect of every day life — from playing compact discs, eye surgery, cutting steel, and making astronomical measurements. Townes’s research on lasers earned him the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics, which he shared with Russian scientists Nikolai Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov, who conducted separate research on the theory.
Townes began his research career with the legendary Bell Laboratories during World War II, designing radar bombing systems and navigation devices. A deeply religious man, Townes won the Templeton Prize in 2005 for his speeches and essays exploring the similarities between science and religion.
