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oct10-offprint-townes.pdf

laserThe 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics was divided, one half awarded to Charles Hard Townes "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle", the other half jointly to Nicolay Gennadiyevich Basov and Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov "for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle". Dr. Townes was invited to give the CAP’s Herzberg Public Lecture during the 2010 Congress as part of Laserfest - a celebration of the 50th Anniver-sary of the Laser. This paper is an excerpt of the first (historical) portion of his talk.