1915-

American Physicist

Charles Townes conceived and built the first maser (1953), for which he won a share of the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics. Townes later worked with Arthur Schawlow (1921- ) on extending maser principles to the visible portion of the spectrum, which resulted in the first detailed proposal for building a laser (1958).

Charles Hard Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on July 28, 1915. Having skipped seventh grade, he graduated from high school at age 15. He graduated summa cum laude from Furman University in 1935 with degrees in science and modern languages. Townes received his physics masters degree from Duke University in 1936 before matriculating at the California Institute of Technology, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1939.

During World War II Townes worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories (1939-47) on radar-assisted bomb sights. In 1948 he joined Columbia University's physics department, where he became an expert on microwave...