Nobel laureates: The winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics are, from top to bottom, Charles K. Kao, formerly of Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, formerly of Bell Laboratories.
Richard Epworth, National Academy of Engineering, National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation/SCANPIX
The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a fiber-optics pioneer and the inventors of digital-imaging chips.
The 2009 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three researchers whose work has formed the basis of modern telecommunications and digital imaging. The prize recognizes Charles K. Kao, whose discoveries led to a breakthrough in fiber optics, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, who invented the CCD (charge-coupled device) image sensor.
Optical fibers carry almost all telecom data and form the backbone of the Internet. "When combined with the laser and the transistor, the invention of an efficient, low-loss optical fiber has made nearly instantaneous communication possible across the entire globe," H. Frederick Dylla, director of the American Institute of Physics, said in a statement.
The work was done in the mid-1960s. The invention of the laser in the early 1960s spurred researchers to develop a practical transmission medium for light, which can transmit data much faster than radio waves. Optical fibers, however, didn't seem promising at the time because of their high rates of attenuation: only about 1 percent of the light sent through the fiber would be transmitted as far as 20 meters.
Kao's insight was to focus not only on the physics of light, but on the material properties of the medium itself. In 1966, as a young engineer at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in Harlow, U.K., Kao discovered the underlying causes of attenuation in optical fiber: iron impurities were causing it to absorb and scatter the light. Pure glass, he suggested, would make a better carrier and would also present cost advantages.
After further studies of how light of different wavelengths travels through different media, Kao and his colleagues pointed to silicon dioxide as the best material. But silicon dioxide is difficult to work with. A team of researchers at Corning Glass Works realized Kao's designs in 1970, using a high-pressure reaction chamber to form the first low-loss optical fibers, and others at Bell Laboratories refined the manufacturing technique to bring down the cost.
Modern optical fibers are even better than what Kao predicted, losing just 5 percent of the light over a distance of a kilometer. In 1988 the first intercontinental optical fiber, which was 6,000 kilometers, was laid down between Europe and America; today there are over one billion kilometers of optical fiber around the world, with more being added each day.
Embedding microlenses in thin films could bring 3-D movies and games to mobile devices.
Three chemists are honored for discovering and developing a glowing jellyfish protein.
Findings transformed storage and could pave the way for new devices.
These are two huge discoveries that have had a major impact on peoples lives.
While in related fields, they are quite different, and could have merited one Physics prize for each discovery.
Well they both are genius and They also expand the knowledge regarding physics and this innovation is useful in future.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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Mapou
357 Comments
Nice Article
Very nicely written article. Thank you. Those guys surely deserve the Nobel Prize and more. Where would we be without their pioneering research? Congratulations to the new laureates.
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dtutelman
117 Comments
Re: Nice Article
That's a very good point. Because that pioneering research is not supported as it once was.
Look at where the CCD came from -- along with two other devices, the transistor and the laser, mentioned in the article but recognized previously with their own Nobels. All three emerged from a Bell Labs that no longer exists. I'm not just saying that Bell Labs is no more; the environment that allowed the inventions of the CCD, the laser, and the transistor was gone from the Labs long before Bell Labs itself was gone.
Bell Labs' involvement with optical fibers is closer to the best we can expect of industrial labs today. The fundamental research was done by Kao at STL. Bell Labs' contribution came afterwards, making the manufacture of fiber practical. The Bell Labs of today (and even 25 years ago) would never have tried to do the Kao work. "99% attenuation at 20 meters? Skip it; we'll do something else." But 40-50 years ago (when Kao, Boyle, and Smith did their Nobel-winning work), the attitude would have been, "Let's ask a small, young, smart team to see how fundamental that limitation is." Or even, "These guys want to see how fundamental that limitation is. Let's fund them."
What has changed? The entire business, social, and political spectrum. But it mostly boils down to the expectation of short-term return on investment. Fundamental research, with its uncertain payback and long payback times, cannot be supported by industry any more. It tends to be limited to universities today.
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nluco
2 Comments
Re: Nice Article
As a journalist, I have just been exposed to Alcatel - Lucent executives bragging about Bell Labs remaining in their organization, the number of patents in 2008, the amount of scientists... Did not seem such a landslide. But the damage the demand for short term results is causing is universal. Your comment also pounds on the demand upon universities' researchers, they have a difficult political task of convincing their funding agencies that "to know" is a good cause. And I am writing from Chile.
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