Dennis Gabor

Dennis Gabor met his future wife, Marjorie Louise Butler. when he was in Rugby, Warwickshire. The couple married in 1936.

He died in South Kensington, London, on 9 February 1979.

Dennis Gabor was born on 5 June 1900, in Budapest, Hungary. He was the oldest son of Günszberg Bernát and Jakobovits Adél. In 1902, the family changed their surname from Günszberg to Gábor.

His family was originally Jewish but in 1918, they converted to Lutheranism. Meanwhile, during World War I, he served with the Hungarian artillery in northern Italy.

After the war ended in 1918, he decided to study engineering. However, physics had always been his favourite subject. He began Electrical Engineering studies in Budapest, and later finished at the Technical Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg. He obtained a Diploma, in 1924.

He also received the doctorate degree in Engineering in 1927, submitting a thesis on the development of one of the first high speed cathode ray oscillographs.

At the beginning of his career, he developed an interest in electron optics and examined the properties of high voltage electric transmission lines, by using cathode-beam oscillographs. He gradually analysed other electron-beam devices such as electron microscopes and TV tubes.

In 1927, he wrote his doctoral thesis on ‘Recording of Transients in Electric Circuits with the Cathode Ray Oscillograph’ and worked on plasma lamps.

In 1933, he had to leave Germany because of his Jewish lineage. After a brief stay in Hungary, he reached England where he was invited to work at the Thomson-Houston company in Rugby, Warwickshire. He eventually became a British citizen in 1946.

In 1947, he invented holography by using a conventional filtered-light source. However, since conventional light sources usually offered either too less light or too diffused light, holography could not be used commercially until the advent of the laser in 1960.

His studies further explored the inputs and outputs of electrons, which led him to invent re-holography. He published the related theories in a series of papers between 1946 and 1951.

Although by profession Dennis Gabor was an electrical engineer, he worked mostly in applied physics. In 1927, he made his first successful invention; the high pressure quartz mercury lamp, which thereafter has been used in millions of street lamps.

In 1947, he experimented with the idea of holography and by using conventional filtered-light sources, developed the basic technique.

His other work included research on high-speed oscilloscopes, communication theory, physical optics, and television. He received more than 100 patents during his lifetime.