Laser Pioneers

Laser Pioneers
Author: Jeff Hecht
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 322
Release: 1992
Genre: Reference
ISBN:

Jeff Hecht details the intriguing story of laser-technology development throughory. The revised edition of Laser Pioneers describes a race for innovativee of thenatingers, process of invention.

Beam : The Race to Make the Laser

Beam : The Race to Make the Laser
Author: Jeff Hecht
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2005-02-11
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199755728

In 1954, Charles Townes invented the laser's microwave cousin, the maser. The next logical step was to extend the same physical principles to the shorter wavelengths of light, but the idea did not catch fire until October 1957, when Townes asked Gordon Gould about Gould's research on using light to excite thallium atoms. Each took the idea and ran with it. The independent-minded Gould sought the fortune of an independent inventor; the professorial Townes sought the fame of scientific recognition. Townes enlisted the help of his brother-in-law, Arthur Schawlow, and got Bell Labs into the race. Gould turned his ideas into a patent application and a million-dollar defense contract. They soon had company. Ali Javan, one of Townes's former students, began pulling 90-hour weeks at Bell Labs with colleague Bill Bennett. And far away in California a bright young physicist named Ted Maiman became a very dark horse in the race. While Schawlow proclaimed that ruby could never make a laser, Maiman slowly convinced himself it would. As others struggled with recalcitrant equipment and military secrecy, Maiman built a tiny and elegant device that fit in the palm of his hand. His ruby laser worked the first time he tried it, on May 16, 1960, but afterwards he had to battle for acceptance as the man who made the first laser. Beam is a fascinating tale of a remarkable and powerful invention that has become a symbol of modern technology.

Nico Bloembergen

Nico Bloembergen
Author: Rob Herber
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2019-11-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030257371

This biography is a personal portrait of one of the best-known Dutch physicists, Nicolaas Bloembergen. Born in 1920 in Dordrecht, Bloembergen studied physics in Utrecht, leaving after World War II for the United States, where he became an American citizen in 1958. At Harvard University, he pioneered nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR, used in chemistry and biology for structure identification; moreover leading to MRI), laser theory and nonlinear optics. In 1978 he was awarded the Lorentz Medal for his contribution to the theory of nonlinear optics (used in fiber optics), and in 1981 he received the Nobel Prize for physics, along with Arthur Schawlow and Kai Siegbahn. The book is based on numerous conversations with Nicolaas Bloembergen himself, his wife Deli Brink, his family, and colleagues in science. It describes his childhood and study in Bilthoven and Utrecht, the first postwar years at Harvard, the discoveries of masers and lasers, and the award of the Nobel Prize. It also delves into Bloembergen's involvement in American politics, particularly his role in Ronald Reagan's controversial "Star Wars" program.

Biographical Memoirs

Biographical Memoirs
Author: National Academy of Sciences
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2003-12-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030908699X

Biographic Memoirs Volume 83 contains the biographies of deceased members of the National Academy of Sciences and bibliographies of their published works. Each biographical essay was written by a member of the Academy familiar with the professional career of the deceased. For historical and bibliographical purposes, these volumes are worth returning to time and again.

The Laser Guidebook

The Laser Guidebook
Author: Jeff Hecht
Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional
Total Pages: 516
Release: 1999-09-22
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780071359672

New edition of a reference and tutorial introduction to the practical aspects of lasers--the functional characteristics vital to those who work with them. A few chapters describe basic principles; subsequent chapters are devoted to the various kinds of lasers, e.g. helium-neon, noble gas, helium-cadmium, carbon dioxide, chemical, copper and gold vapor, excimer, nitrogen, and others. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Hybrid Practices

Hybrid Practices
Author: David Cateforis
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2018-11-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520296591

In Hybrid Practices, essays by established and emerging scholars investigate the rich ecology of practices that typified the era of the Cold War. The volume showcases three projects at the forefront of unprecedented collaboration between the arts and new sectors of industrial society in the 1960s and 70s—Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), the Art and Technology Project at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (A&T), and the Artist Placement Group (APG) in the UK. The subjects covered include collaborative projects between artists and scientists, commercial ventures and experiments in intermedia, multidisciplinary undertakings, effacing authorship to activate the spectator, suturing gaps between art and government, and remapping the landscape of everyday life in terms of technological mediation. Among the artists discussed in the volume and of interest to a broad public beyond the art world are Bernd and Hilla Becher, John Cage, Hans Haacke, Robert Irwin, John Latham, Fujiko Nakaya, Carolee Schneemann, James Turrell, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Whitman. Prominent engineers and scientists appearing in the book’s pages include Elsa Garmire, Billy Klüver, Frank Malina, Stanley Milgram, and Ed Wortz. This valuable collection aims to introduce readers not only to hybrid work in and as depth, but also to work in and as breadth, across disciplinary practices where the real questions of hybridity are determined.