2022/8/31 08:25 Arthur Leonard Schawlow - Wikipedia

Arthur Leonard Schawlow

Arthur Leonard Schawlow (May 5, 1921 – April 28, 1999)
was an American physicist and co-inventor of the laser with Arthur Leonard
Charles Townes. His central insight, which Townes Schawlow
overlooked, was the use of two mirrors as the resonant cavity
to take maser action from microwaves to visible wavelengths.
He shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas
Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for his work using lasers to
determine atomic energy levels with great precision.[1][2]

Contents
Biography
Science and religion
Personal life
Arthur Leonard Schawlow in 1981
Awards and honors Born May 5, 1921

Bibliography Mount Vernon,

New York, U.S.
See also
Died April 28, 1999
References (aged 77)

External links Palo Alto,

California, U.S.
Nationality United States
Biography
Alma mater University of
Schawlow was born in Mount Vernon, New York. His mother, Toronto
Helen (Mason), was from Canada, and his father, Arthur Known for Laser spectroscopy

Schawlow, was a Jewish immigrant from Riga (then in the Laser cooling

Russian Empire, now in Latvia). Schawlow was raised in his Schawlow–Townes

mother's Protestant religion.[3] When Arthur was three years approximation
old, they moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Spouse(s) Aurelia Townes (m.
At the age of 16, he completed high school at Vaughan Road 1951; 3 children)
Academy (then Vaughan Collegiate Institute), and received a Awards Stuart Ballantine
scholarship in science at the University of Toronto (Victoria Medal (1962)

College). After earning his undergraduate degree, Schawlow

IEEE Morris N.
continued in graduate school at the University of Toronto
Liebmann Memorial
which was interrupted due to World War II. At the end of the
war, he began work on his Ph.D at the university with Award (1964)

Professor Malcolm Crawford. He then took a postdoctoral Richtmyer

position with Charles H. Townes at the physics department of Memorial Award
Columbia University in the fall of 1949. (1970)

Frederic Ives Medal

(1976)

Marconi Prize (1977)

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He went on to accept a position at Bell Labs in late 1951. He Nobel Prize for
left in 1961 to join the faculty at Stanford University as a Physics (1981)

professor. He remained at Stanford until he retired to National Medal of

emeritus status in 1996. Science (1991)
Although his research focused on optics, in particular, lasers Scientific career
and their use in spectroscopy, he also pursued investigations Fields Physics
in the areas of superconductivity and nuclear resonance.
Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Institutions Bell Labs
Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn for their Columbia
contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy. University

Stanford University
Schawlow coauthored the widely used text Microwave
Doctoral Malcolm Crawford
Spectroscopy (1955) with Charles Townes. Schawlow and
advisor
Townes were the first to publish the theory of laser design and
operation in their seminal 1958 paper on "optical masers",[4] Doctoral Antoinette Taylor
although Gordon Gould is often credited with the "invention" students
of the laser, due to his unpublished work that predated
Schawlow and Townes by a few months.[5] The first working laser was made in 1960 by Theodore
Maiman.

In 1991, the NEC Corporation and the American Physical Society established a prize: the Arthur L.
Schawlow Prize in Laser Science. The prize is awarded annually to "candidates who have made
outstanding contributions to basic research using lasers."

Science and religion

He participated in science and religion discussions. Regarding God, he stated, "I find a need for
God in the universe and in my own life."[6]

Personal life
In 1951, he married Aurelia Townes, younger sister of his postdoctoral advisor, Charles Townes.
They had three children: Arthur Jr., Helen, and Edith. Arthur Jr. is autistic, with very little speech
ability.

Schawlow and Professor Robert Hofstadter at Stanford, who also had an autistic child, teamed up
to help each other find solutions to the condition. Arthur Jr. was put in a special center for autistic
individuals, and later, Schawlow put together an institution to care for people with autism in
Paradise, California. It was later named the Arthur Schawlow Center in 1999, shortly before his
death. Schawlow was a promoter of the controversial method of facilitated communication with
patients of autism.[7][8]

He considered himself to be an orthodox Protestant Christian, and attended a Methodist church.[3]

Arthur Schawlow was an intense fan and collector of traditional American jazz recordings, as well
as a supporter of instrumental groups performing this type of music.

Schawlow died of leukemia in Palo Alto, California on April 28, 1999 at the age 77.

Awards and honors

1962 - Stuart Ballantine Medal

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1963 - Young Medal and Prize, for distinguished research in the field of optics
presented by the Institute of physics
1970 - elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[9]
1970 - elected to the National Academy of Sciences[10]
1976 - awarded the Frederic Ives Medal (http://www.osa.org/awards_and_grants/award
s/award_description/ivesquinn/) by OSA
1981 - Nobel Prize for Physics
1983 - Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[11]
1984 - elected to the American Philosophical Society[12]

Bibliography
Schawlow, A L (1995), "Principles of lasers", Journal of Clinical Laser Medicine & Surgery
(published Jun 1995), vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 127–30, doi:10.1089/clm.1995.13.127 (https://d
oi.org/10.1089%2Fclm.1995.13.127), PMID 10150635 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
10150635)
Schawlow, AL (1982), "Spectroscopy in a New Light", Science (published Jul 2, 1982),
vol. 217, no. 4554, pp. 9–16, Bibcode:1982Sci...217....9S (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/a
bs/1982Sci...217....9S), doi:10.1126/science.217.4554.9 (https://doi.org/10.1126%2Fscien
ce.217.4554.9), PMID 17739964 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17739964)
Schawlow, AL (1978), "Laser Spectroscopy of Atoms and Molecules", Science (published
Oct 13, 1978), 202 (4364): 141–147, Bibcode:1978Sci...202..141S (https://ui.adsabs.harva
rd.edu/abs/1978Sci...202..141S), doi:10.1126/science.202.4364.141 (https://doi.org/10.1
126%2Fscience.202.4364.141), PMID 17801904 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1780
1904)
McCaul, B W; Schawlow, A L (1969), "Plasma refractive effects in HCN lasers", Ann. N. Y.
Acad. Sci. (published Feb 10, 1969), vol. 168, no. 3, pp. 697–702,
Bibcode:1969NYASA.168..697M (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1969NYASA.168..69
7M), doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1969.tb43154.x (https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1749-6632.1
969.tb43154.x), PMID 5273948 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5273948),
S2CID 31588499 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:31588499)
Schawlow, A L (1966), "Lasers", International Ophthalmology Clinics, vol. 6, no. 2,
pp. 241–51, doi:10.1097/00004397-196600620-00002 (https://doi.org/10.1097%2F0000
4397-196600620-00002), PMID 5958291 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5958291)

See also
Optical Society of America#Past Presidents of the OSA

References
1. "Arthur L. Schawlow" (http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Arthur_L._Schawlow).
IEEE Global History Network. IEEE. Retrieved 10 August 2011.
2. Hänsch, Theodor W. (December 1999). "Obituary: Arthur Leonard Schawlow" (http://ww
w.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v52/i12/p75_s2?bypassSSO=1). Physics Today.
52 (12): 75–76. Bibcode:1999PhT....52l..75H (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999Ph
T....52l..75H). doi:10.1063/1.2802854 (https://doi.org/10.1063%2F1.2802854).

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2022/8/31 08:25 Arthur Leonard Schawlow - Wikipedia

3. "The religion of Arthur Schawlow, Nobel Prize-winning physicist; worked with lasers" (ht
tps://web.archive.org/web/20070714082844/http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Art
hur_Schawlow.html). www.adherents.com. Archived from the original on July 14, 2007.
4. Schawlow, Arthur L.; Townes, Charles H. (December 1958). "Infrared and optical masers"
(https://doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.112.1940). Physical Review. 112 (6–15): 1940–1949.
Bibcode:1958PhRv..112.1940S (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1958PhRv..112.1940S).
doi:10.1103/PhysRev.112.1940 (https://doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRev.112.1940).
5. Taylor, Nick (2000). LASER: The inventor, the Nobel laureate, and the thirty-year patent
war. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 62–70. ISBN 0-684-83515-0. OCLC 122973716 (ht
tps://www.worldcat.org/oclc/122973716).
6. Margenau, H. (1992), Cosmos, Bios, Theos: Scientists Reflect on Science, God, and the
Origins of the Universe, Life, and Homo sapiens, Open Court Publishing Company,
p. 105 co-edited with Roy Abraham Varghese. This book is mentioned in a December
28, 1992 Time magazine article: Galileo And Other Faithful Scientists (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20081208234715/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,97735
2-1,00.html)
7. "Arthur Schawlow, Nobel laureate and co-inventor of the laser, dies: 4/99" (http://news-
service.stanford.edu/news/1999/may5/schawlowobit-55.html). News-
service.stanford.edu. 1999-05-05. Retrieved 2022-08-19.
8. http://suedweb.syr.edu/thefci/2-1sch.htm
9. "Arthur Leonard Schawlow" (https://www.amacad.org/person/arthur-leonard-schawlo
w). American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-05-19.
10. "Arthur L. Schawlow" (http://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/deceased-member
s/50823.html). www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2022-05-19.
11. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement" (https://achieveme
nt.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/#science-exploration). www.achievement.org.
American Academy of Achievement.
12. "APS Member History" (https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Arthur+
Schawlow&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=
&smode=advanced). search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-05-19.

External links
Arthur Leonard Schawlow (https://www.nobelprize.org/laureate/119) on Nobelprize.org
including the Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1981 Spectroscopy in a New Light
Nobel Winner: Arthur Leonard Schawlow (http://www.nobel-winners.com/Physics/arthu
r_leonard_schawlow.html)
Bright Idea: The First Lasers (laser history) (http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/laser/se
ctions/raydevices.html)
Press Release: The 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics (https://web.archive.org/web/200512260
92206/http://buzyall.narod.ru/eto/schawlow-press.html)
Arthur Leonard Schawlow obituary (https://web.archive.org/web/20051101192439/htt
p://news-service.stanford.edu/news/1999/may5/schawlowobit-55-a.html)

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