Charles H. Townes

On January 27, 2015, he died at the age of 99 in Oakland, California.

Charles Hard Townes was born on July 28 1915 , in Greenville, South Carolina. He was the son of Ellen Sumter Townes and Henry Keith Townes, an attorney.

He attended the Greenville Public Schools and graduated from the Furman University in 1935 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Modern Languages.

In 1937, Townes received his Master of Arts degree in Physics at Duke University.

In 1939, he earned his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology where he worked on isotope separation and nuclear spins.

In 1939 Townes started his career as a technical staff in Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.

In 1950, Townes was appointed a professor at Columbia University.

From 1950 to 1952, he served as executive director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory and from 1952 to 1955, as the chairman of the physics department.

In 1951 Charles Hard Townes developed a new way to create beams of coherent radiation or the Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (Maser).

In December 1953, Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger built the first ammonia maser at Columbia University to produce amplification of microwaves at a frequency of 24.0 gigahertz.

Townes discovered a way to produce a self-excited oscillator that would amplify signals through the use of stimulated emission. This device is known as Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation or ‘Maser’ in short. It is operated on ammonia gas and is useful in the experiments carried on a quantum level. This device is also used in long-distance radar, microwave communications and radio astronomy.

During his term as professor at the University of California, he initiated a program of radio and infrared astronomy that lead to the discovery of complex molecules in the interstellar medium.