|
    
|
Arthur SchawlowI guess you all know that the word laser is an acronym standing for Lots of Applied Scientists Eat Regularly. And some of them do. ![[ Arthur Schawlow at the
microphone, with Charles Townes ]](../images/party_schawlow.jpeg)
It's been an exciting 40 years, and it's still exciting. The thing that turns me on now, particularly, is that lasers now permit people to study single atoms and single photons, and we're really learning a lot more about just how strange the world of quantum mechanics is and finding new ways to test it. So far it stands up to everything, but a bunch of clever people will find other ways. And it's nice that there are medical uses. Some of you have probably heard me say before that although there is a lot of talk in the newspapers about death rays, there still aren't any real death rays as far as I know. But one of the first applications of lasers was for surgery of the retina in the eye to prevent blindness from retinal detachment. Neither Charlie nor I had ever heard of surgery for detached retinas to try to prevent blindness, and if we had, we probably wouldn't have been fooling around with stimulated emission from atoms. It's been a great 40 years. [more] Speakers in this Section |
