in their shoes a little bit,” recalls Dr. Paul Goldsmith, a former Townes student and chairman of the group that organized a two-day remembrance of Townes just after what would have been his 100th


birthday Aug. 1-2 at Berkeley. “You have a great


responsibility to them, and you have to do your best to try to share any wisdom you might have with them and to inspire them to do their best to learn how to solve problems and overcome obstacles.”


Goldsmith, of the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA, studied with Townes while pursuing his Ph.D. at Berkeley from 1971 to ’75. “I found him then and since to be an extraordinary individual in terms of being able to be engaged and helpful with students even in the midst of having many students, colleagues (and) huge responsibilities. You could always get a chance to talk to him, and he would be able to answer questions and be an inspiration in a way that was just remarkable.”


Encountering Townes throughout his career, Goldsmith “still always gained a great deal from hearing his thoughts on scientific questions and enjoyed interacting (with him) as a wonderful human being.”


Such was Townes’ impact that he received LIA’s first Lifetime Achievement Award at ICALEO 2010 in Anaheim. Reflecting on the award in an email, Townes noted that “I am very privileged to receive the lifetime achievement award. And I feel my life has been very privileged by the opportunity to do research, discover new things, and particularly by the


discovery of


how a laser could be made. I am also delighted by the many contributions that colleagues have made in development of the laser and further associated discoveries. These have made the


Married in 1941, the couple had four daughters, one of whom — Dr. Ellen Townes-Anderson — is a professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurosciences at Rutgers in Newark, NJ. She


TOWNES


Wins Templeton prize for contributions to the understanding of


religion; wins Nancy TOWNES


Became Officer of French Legion of Honor in 1990.


Compact Disc


’80s in Blue LED, courtesy Gussisaurio ’90s


Schawlow and Bloembergen won the Nobel Prize


Physics


LASER for


contribution to laser spectroscopy; titanium-sapphire laser developed; audio CD appears; Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers introduced.


Fiber Laser, courtesy Fraunhofer ILT


2000– 2014


LASER


Quantum cascade laser invented; quantum dot and single-atom lasers demonstrated; first pulsed atom laser; gallium-nitride laser appears.


lasers emerge in industrial


Townes receives LIA Lifetime Achievement Award at ICALEO®


2010 from past President Raj Patel.


Laser market valued at nearly $6 billion; short-pulse lasers announced; diode


LASER materials


processing applications; fiber lasers reach 30 kW to 100 kW in industrial applications; diode-pumped disk lasers achieve combined industrial powers of 20 kW to 30 kW; additive manufacturing applications for prototypes and parts surge as part of $4 billion global industry.


DeLoye Fitzroy and Roland V Fitzroy Medal; gave Karl Schwarzschild Lecture in Germany and Birla / Schroedinger lectures in India.


TOWNES’ CAREER AND THE LASER’S DEVELOPMENT


field of optics blossom with so many fascinating contributions to science and to technology. Many thanks for this honor, and more importantly many thanks for the many contributions other scientists and engineers have made towards the exciting growth of optics.”


Townes gave a detailed portrait of his life in a comprehensive series of interviews in 1991 and 1992 as part of an oral history project for Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. Townes candidly and vividly recounted everything from his pre-Revolutionary War ancestry to his boyhood in Greenville, SC, growing up with five siblings, his education and extraordinary career, his religious faith, and his views on everything from the importance of school grades to the uniqueness of Southern culture and the work of his peers.


No less a formidable presence in Townes’ life was his wife, Frances, who recounted her experiences in her 2007 book Misadventures of a Scientist’s Wife. In the program for the dedication of The Charles H. Townes Center for Science at Furman University in 2008, Frances Townes is described as a “champion of women’s rights, friend of the homeless, environmental educator,


and visionary community leader”


who taught English to foreign students at Columbia University, organized career programs for MIT faculty women, and advocated for homeless youth for more than 20 years. (Townes earned bachelor’s degrees in physics and modern languages from Furman in 1935.)


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