[pdf] A life in physics: Bell Telephone Laboratories and World War II, Columbia University and the laser, MIT and government service, California and research in astrophysics Charles Hard Townes, Arthur L. Schawlow, Suzanne B. Riess

Townes, Charles Hard (b. 1915) Physicist A Life in Physics: Bell Telephone Laboratories and World War II; Columbia University and the Laser; MIT and Government Service; California and Research in Astrophysics, 1994, xxiv.

South Carolina family background; education at Furman, Duke, and Caltech; Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1939-1947, radar work, WWII; Columbia University, professor of physics, microwave spectroscopy lab, 1948-1955; 1951 maser discovery: Office of Naval Research millimeter wave committee, earlier related work, Columbia associates, publication and patent, Russian claims, challenges, patent law; air force and navy interest in maser and laser; International Conference on Quantum Electronics, 1959; vice-president and director of research, Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]: President’s Science Advisory Council, the Jason Group, ARPA, Vietnam; 1964 Nobel prize in physics, and other honors; GM Science and Technical Advisory Committee, and other directorships; MIT provost and professor, 1961-1966, academics in government; UC University Professor since 1967: Berkeley in the sixties, committee work; championing the Apollo program, 1964-1970, problems of MX basing, SDI; move into astrophysics and infrared work at Berkeley; thoughts on religion, responsibility, fallibility, future. Includes an interview with Frances Brown Townes. Appended 1984 talk to Jason Group.

Introduction by Arthur L. Schawlow, Jackson-Wood Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Stanford University.

Interviewed 1991-1992 by Suzanne B. Riess for the University History Series. The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.