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Charles Townes

A black-and-white portrait of Charles Townes, wearing glasses and a suit, with a neutral background.

American physicist (1915-2015) who built the first maser, a microwave-frequency precursor to the laser, at Columbia University in 1954. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of stimulated-emission amplification, and later co-authored the 1958 paper with Arthur Schawlow that laid out how to extend the principle to optical wavelengths, opening the race that Maiman won two years later.

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