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The Charles H. Townes Centennial Celebration Symposium
University of California, Berkeley
LASERS, LIGHT AND LEGACY - The Scientific Legacy of Charles Townes
"What Would Charlie Have Thought?"
Saturday, August 1, 2015 to Sunday, August 2, 2015
A public symposium on the scientific work and the careers
of the students, post-docs and closest colleagues of Professor Charles Townes.
http://physics.berkeley.edu/news-events/events/20150801/event-details-lasers-light-and-legacy
http://townes.ssl.berkeley.edu/home/2015-symposium/
Saturday August 1st, 2015 atop Campbell Hall
Katherine McCall '77, Peter Tuthill - University of Sydney, Ellen Townes-Anderson - Rutgers,
John Monnier - University of Michigan, Everette Lipman - UC Santa Barbara
Katherine McCall '77, Peter Tuthill - University of Sydney, Ellen Townes-Anderson - Rutgers,
John Monnier - University of Michigan, Everette Lipman - UC Santa Barbara
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Charles Hard Townes
University of California, Berkeley 1967 - 2015
Department of Physics + Space Sciences Laboratory
Let there be Light :: Fait Lux | University of California, 1868
Charles Hard Townes, left, is pictured in 1954 with a maser he developed
with then-graduate student James P. Gordon, right, and then-postdoctoral researcher H.J. Zeiger
(not shown). The device radiated at a wavelength of a little more than 1 cm
and generated approximately 10 nW of power.
with then-graduate student James P. Gordon, right, and then-postdoctoral researcher H.J. Zeiger
(not shown). The device radiated at a wavelength of a little more than 1 cm
and generated approximately 10 nW of power.
Charlie Townes’ career highlights include a Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded on 10 December 1964, for discovering the laser, ground-breaking astronomical research, wide-ranging admiration for his efforts to reconcile science and religion, 31 honorary degrees and 38 awards. He shard the Nobel Prize with Nicolay G. Basov and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov.
“(Townes) was one of the most important experimental physicists of the last century,” said Dr. Reinhard Genzel, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. “To those who knew him as colleagues or students, he was a role model, a wonderful mentor and a deeply admired person. His strength was his curiosity and his unshakable optimism, based on his deep Christian spirituality.” After his initial discovery, Townes went on to use masers and lasers for astronomy, detecting the first complex molecules in interstellar space and measuring the mass of the black hole in the center of our galaxy. He was also a prominent player in national science policy. From 1966 to 1970, Townes chaired a NASA ad hoc science advisory committee for the Apollo moon flights. In 1981, he chaired a panel reviewing President Ronald Reagan’s planned deployment of MX missiles, and actively advocated for controls on nuclear weapons, including a test ban treaty to regulate underground weapons testing. Born in Greenville, S.C., Townes graduated summa cum laude at the age of 19 from Furman University with bachelor’s degrees in physics and modern languages. He completed a master’s degree in physics at Duke University and moved to Caltech, from which he obtained his doctorate; his thesis involved isotope separation and nuclear spins. During World War II, Townes worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey, designing radar bombing systems. After the war, he took a faculty position at Columbia University and was later appointed provost and professor at MIT, in 1961. He continued his research on quantum electronics and moved into the new field of infrared astronomy, later becoming a professor-at-large at UC Berkeley in 1967. Until last year, Townes visited the campus daily, working either in his office in the Physics Department or at the Space Sciences Laboratory. http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=57148 "Berkeley is quite open minded, it lets you do what you want to do,” Townes said in a recent interview. “It’s a great place to do interesting things and a great university. I have a good time doing physics; it’s not work, it’s just fun.” http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/birthday-bash-celebrate-laser-inventor-charles-townes’-99th In 1967 he was named a UC Professor-at-large based on the UC Berkeley campus. “He came to Berkeley because it gave him the opportunity that almost no one else would, to look for complex, polyatomic molecules in space, which most people didn’t believe were there,” Fitelson said. Newly arrived at UC Berkeley, Townes soon learned of plans by young professor William “Jack” Welch to build a short-wavelength radio telescope, and offered some of his start-up funds to build a maser amplifier and microwave spectrometer so the telescope could be used to search for evidence of complex molecules, like ammonia, in space. Told by many, including the astronomy department chairman, that such molecules could not possibly survive in space, Welch and Townes persisted and in 1968 proved them wrong. They were the first to discover three-atom combinations – ammonia and water vapor – near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Others soon discovered even more complex molecules, providing evidence for a host of chemical reactions taking place in young and dying stars and giving credence to the idea that molecules from space could have seeded Earth with the building blocks of life. “This was my first foray into astronomy, and the discovery was a big boost for me,” Welch said. “And it was all his idea. Charlie is just a terrific guy.” Welch and Townes went on to discover the water maser in space. Revelation Townes was 35 in the spring of 1951 when, seated on a park bench among blooming azaleas in Washington, D.C., he was struck by the solution to a long standing problem, how to create an pure beam of short-wavelength, high-frequency light. That revelation – not much different from a religious revelation, Townes believes – eventually led to the first laser, a now ubiquitous device common in medicine, telecommunication, entertainment and science. Charlie shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics, for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy. In 1985, he discovered a Black Hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. https://highered.nbclearn.com/portal/site/HigherEd/flatview?cuecard=43477 In 2005, he won the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. In 2010, he was the recipient of the Gold Medal of SPIE in recognition of his extraordinary foresight in recognizing the potential of the laser and coherent light 50 years ago. Charles invites us to celebrate The International Year of Light 2015. Milky Way Galaxy's Black Hole 
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http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2015/01/27/nobel-laureate-and-laser-inventor-charles-townes-dies-at-99/ 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. | Genesis 1 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. | John 1 When I graduated from Cal in 1977, Nobel laureate for Physics in 1964, Dr. Charles H. Townes spoke. He arrived on campus in 1967, and I took my first Physics course in Fall Quarter of 1969. He was still in his office in Birge Hall last year, for his 99th birthday party. In an interview, Charlie Townes told us that his older brother went on to study Biology yet he found that to be, then, only a descriptive science and didn’t explain things. During his sophomore year at Furman University, he took his first course in Physics. He said he was drawn into this science, as Physics helps us understand things and how things worked; because of its "beautifully logical structure." This was my discipline-discovery experience, too. During Spring Quarter, 1975, Charlie stopped to talk with me in the hallway of LeConte, and invited me into his lab to see how a holograph was made. The photo, atop, from the "Lasers, Light, and Legacy" Symposium, 2015, is the image-remembrance I have of him at that moment. As a fourth-generation Cal, and third-generation Greek-letter student, I shared with him my lavaliere, from having newly-pledged Kappa Alpha Theta, and how these were also the first three letters of my name, though known by "Kitty" at the time. Charlie, standing to my right, smiled softly and said, "Well, actually, they are the first four letters," and we laughed. Interesting how that moment stayed with me. When I chose an alias for my iCloud email account, I chose "kath" rather than "kat." We were almost late for my graduation ceremony because I was thoughtless enough to move that week instead of celebrate with family and the friends I would be apart from the rest of my life. We hastened to LeConte Hall. The only seats left were added chairs in front of the lecture hall seats. My brother, Tom Klitgaard ’77 in Math and Economics, was looking for seats in the very back and I signaled to him to head to the seats I could see, in the very front. I remember Professor Townes handing us our diplomas as he shook our hands, in congratulations. I still see the moment when my name was called and I needed only to rise and step a few feet forward. A gift to me to not be seen by the public or watched as I approached. It was just him and me in a moment I had worked for since my first physics experiments were sent to my home, in the fourth grade. In around 1991, the California Monthly magazine had an article about Charlie Townes, on how he felt it was time to reunite science with knowledge of God. “Let there be Light,” I thought! The only Department Reunion ever held was in the Faculty Club in 2003. I introduced myself to him and reminded him of graduation ceremonies in 1977. I still see his smiling face, as life’s second evening together began. When I listened to and read this, “In 1951, Townes was seated on a park bench in Washington, D. C. [waiting for a restaurant to open for breakfast], when he thought up the solution to the problem of how to create a beam of pure short-wavelength, high-frequency light,” I instantly though of Walt Disney. Walt sat on a park bench in LA’s Griffith Park in the early 1950s, watching his two daughters re-riding the merry-go-‘round, when he had the idea to make a park where parents and children could play together. Walt Disney’s bench is on display just as you come in to Disneyland. There is a bronze statue of Charlie Townes and his bench, in D. C. Thanks be unto you and let Lux Aeterna shine upon thee, Charles Hard Townes. Amen. Requiem by John Rutter 
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"Science tries to understand what our universe is like and how it works, including us humans," Townes wrote in 2005 upon being awarded the Templeton Prize for his contributions in "affirming life's spiritual dimension." "My own view is that, while science and religion may seem different, they have many similarities, and should interact and enlighten each other," he wrote.
1964 Nobel Prize in Physics,
for the invention of the MASER/LASER
MASER = Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, through molecules and atoms.
Microwaves are a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from one meter to one millimeter, with frequencies between 0.3 GHZ and 300 GHZ.
LASER = Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation, an optical MASER
Visible light with wavelengths ranging from 390 to 700 nanometers, with frequencies between 430 and 790 THz; the spectrum of colors from violet through red.
“Only one place it doesn't fit and that is in the Infrared, then it would be “IRASER!” says Charlie.
Infrared (IR) electromagnetic radiation is invisible radiant energy, extending from the red edge of the visible spectrum and measured by a thermometer, with wavelengths ranging from 700 nanometers to 1 mm, and frequencies between 430 THz to 300 GHz.
2005 Templeton Prize
In 2005, he won the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities. The award, billed as the world's richest religion prize, was worth more than $1.5 million, and past recipients have included Mother Teresa.
In 1966, [Charles Townes] published an article entitled "The Convergence of Science and Religion" in the IBM journal THINK. The differences between science and religion "are largely superficial," he wrote, "the two become almost indistinguishable if we look at the real nature of each.
"Many people don't realize that science basically involves assumptions and faith. But nothing is absolutely proved," Townes said at the time. "Wonderful things in both science and religion come from our efforts based on observations, thoughtful assumptions, faith and logic.”
Charlie said, in this 2005 interview, “Science and religion have had a long interaction: some of it has been good and some of it hasn't. As Western science grew, Newtonian mechanics had scientists thinking that everything is predictable, meaning there's no room for God - so-called determinism. Religious people didn't want to agree with that. Then Darwin came along, and they really didn't want to agree with what he was saying, because it seemed to negate the idea of a creator. So there was a real clash for a while between science and religions.”
“But science has been digging deeper and deeper, and as it has done so, particularly in the basic sciences like physics and astronomy, we have begun to understand more. We have found that the world is not deterministic: quantum mechanics has revolutionized physics by showing that things are not completely predictable."
"That doesn't mean that we've found just where God comes in, but we know now that things are not as predictable as we thought and that there are things we don't understand. For example, we don't know what some 95 percent of the matter in the universe is: we can't see it - it's neither atom nor molecule, apparently."
"We think we can prove it's there, we see its effect on gravity, but we don't know what and where it is, other than broadly scattered around the universe. And that's very strange.” He is talking about "dark matter."
http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/06/17_townes.shtml
Through all these scientific adventures, Townes maintained a deep faith in the existence of God. He saw his faith as intertwined with his science. "Consider what religion is," he told NPR in 2005. "Religion is an attempt to understand the purpose and meaning of our universe. What is science? It's an attempt to understand how our universe works. Well, if there's a purpose and meaning, that must have something to do with how it works, so those two must be related."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/28/382178361/charles-townes-laser-inventor-black-hole-discoverer-dies-at-99
2010 recipient of the Gold Medal of SPIE, an International Society for Optics and Photonics
Charles H. Townes is the 2010 recipient of the Gold Medal of SPIE in recognition of his extraordinary foresight in recognizing the potential of the laser and coherent light 50 years ago, for his pursuit of the requisite scientific inquiry to turn lasers into one of the most potentially disruptive technologies of the 21st century and, finally, for his pioneering scientific contributions to the fields of optics, lasers, astronomy and molecular spectroscopy.
http://spie.org/x39361.xml
International Year of Light 2015
Charlie invites us to celebrate The International Year of Light 2015, to recognize the importance of raising global awareness of how light-based technologies promote sustainable development and provide solutions to global challenges in energy, education, agriculture, and health.
http://spie.org/x93905.xml?WT.mc_id=ZIYOLGB
