History
Laser science predates the invention of the laser itself. Albert Einstein created the foundations for the laser and maser in 1917, via a paper in which he re-derived Max Planck’s law of radiation using a formalism based on probability coefficients (Einstein coefficients) for the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The existence of stimulated emission was confirmed in 1928 by Rudolf W. Ladenburg. In 1939, Valentin A. Fabrikant predicted the use of stimulated emission to amplify "short" waves; In 1947, Willis E. Lamb and R. C. Retherford found apparent stimulated emission in hydrogen spectra and effected the first demonstration of stimulated emission; in 1950, Alfred Kastler (Nobel Prize for Physics 1966) proposed the method of optical pumping, experimentally confirmed, two years later, by Brossel, Kastler, and Winter. The first working laser (a pulsed ruby laser) was demonstrated on May 16, 1960, by Theodore Maiman at the Hughes Research Laboratories.
Read more about this topic: Laser Science
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)