Nobel Prize winner and
laser co-inventor Townes to give Bunyan Lecture
BY DAWN LEVY
Physicist and Nobel Prize
winner Charles H. Townes will deliver the 20th annual
Bunyan Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 12, in Terman
Auditorium. The talk is titled "Logic and
Uncertainty in Science and Religion." Hosted by the
Astronomy Program in the Department of Physics, the talk
is free and open to the public.
"There's a
relationship between the two fields [science and
religion]," Townes said in a phone interview.
"We should use all of our human faculties -- logic,
evidence, intuition -- in understanding each. There are
inconsistencies, things we don't understand about each.
But we try to get the best answers that we can in both
fields. My own view is that they will ultimately
converge."
Townes' principal research
is in microwave spectroscopy, nuclear and molecular
structure, quantum electronics and, more recently, radio
astronomy and infrared astronomy. His work in radio
astronomy resulted in the first detection of polyatomic
molecules in interstellar clouds and the use of molecular
spectra to characterize these clouds. Much of this work
is aimed at gaining a better understanding of the
galaxy's center.
To measure the size of
stars, Townes recently finished developing a pair of
movable telescopes for very high resolution of
astronomical objects at infrared wavelengths. The two
telescopes employ interferometry to combined light as if
it came from a single, gigantic telescope mirror. At 4
p.m. April 11, Townes will speak about this work at a
physics and applied physics colloquium in Room 201 of the
Teaching Center in the Science and Engineering Quad
(TCSEQ). The title of his talk is "Behavior of Old
Stars Observed by Infrared Spatial Interferometry."
Townes received the Nobel
Prize in 1964 for his role in the invention of the maser
and the laser. The maser (an acronym for microwave
amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) was
the forerunner of the laser (light amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation). Townes holds the
original patent for the maser. He holds the original
laser patent with the late Stanford physics Professor
Arthur Schawlow, who died in 1999.
Born in Greenville, S.C.,
in 1915, Townes graduated from Furman University in 1935
with baccalaureate degrees in physics and modern
languages. He completed work for a master's degree in
physics at Duke University in 1936 and received his
doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in
1939.
From 1939 to 1947 he was a
researcher at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and from 1948
to 1961, an associate professor and professor at Columbia
University. He served as vice president and director of
research at the Institute for Defense Analysis from 1959
to 1961. He was provost and professor of physics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1961 to 1965
and university professor at the University of California
from 1967 to the present. (The title "university
professor" refers to the fact that Townes has an
appointment for the entire University of California
rather than for one campus only.) In 1986 he became
university professor emeritus, and in 1994, professor in
the graduate school.
Active as a government
adviser throughout his career, Townes served as a member
of the president's Science Advisory Committee from 1965
to 1969. He chaired the technical advisory committee for
the Apollo Program until shortly after the first lunar
landing. More recently, he chaired committees on
strategic weapons and the MX missile. He has participated
in National Academy of Sciences efforts for international
arms control. He also has helped formulate advice given
by the Papal Academy to the Pope on issues of peace and
the control of nuclear weapons.
Townes is a member of the
National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of
Engineering, Max Planck Society, Royal Society of London,
National Inventors Hall of Fame and Engineering and
Science Hall of Fame. A few of his many awards include
the National Academy of Science's Comstock Prize and the
John J. Carty Medal, the Medal of Honor of the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Plyler Prize
of the American Physical Society, NASA's Distinguished
Public Service Medal, the Franklin Institute's Stuart
Ballentine Medal, the 1979 Niels Bohr International Gold
Medal and the 1982 National Medal of Science. He holds
honorary degrees from 25 colleges and universities. SR
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