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Charles
Townes: A Memoir of a Complex and Productive Life How the Laser Happened is an autobiographical account of the still-vibrant career of one of the major figures of 20th-century physics. Charles Townes’s contributions range from the development of microwave spectroscopy, the coinvention of the maser and the laser, and seminal research in infrared and microwave astronomy to university administration and service as adviser to the government on science and defense policy. The memoir is filled with personal anecdotes that provide insight into an immensely original thinker and scientist of enormous energy and prolific output. The book gives us vignettes from Townes’s early childhood—growing up on a family farm in Greenville, South Carolina, where Southern-planter gentility blended with competitive Yankee inventiveness. He writes to his older sister at the age of ten, “You have asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I want mostly hardware . . . some tin-shears, some money to buy some iron-and-wood bits (as I want a particular size, I had rather pick out my own).” This early funding request was used in a competition with his older brother in which their father awarded “a patent for the one who did something first.” While he was attending Furman University in Greenville, a local college of 500 students, Townes’s aptitude for mathematics and machinery led him to physics. He recalls teaching himself special relativity in the summer of his junior year and reaching “the startling conclusion that Einstein had made a mistake in his logic. I went to lunch, and it was a heady few hours until I came back, sat down again with the book and decided: no, I was wrong and Einstein had gotten it right after all. Despite the false alarm, it was an inspiring moment. It absolutely captivated me that, from a few simple equations, one could reach such profound and strange conclusions about the world.” In spite of his keen aptitude, hard work (and obvious self-confidence!), Townes’s career path was not without setbacks that would later turn into blessings. Unable to secure a graduate fellowship at the schools to which he applied, he enrolled at Caltech as an unsupported graduate student. He did very well there and was offered a research position at Bell Laboratories. Soon after he arrived at Bell Labs, however, he was told to switch from his beloved physics and work on radar bombsights. This forced entry into microwave engineering formed the basis of his work on the microwave spectroscopy of molecules and the invention of the maser. Later in his career, he became MIT’s first provost, but he was passed over as its next president. In response, he concentrated on science and launched a vigorous program in infrared and microwave astronomy. A recurrent theme in the book is the haphazard twists and turns in a career heavily influenced by the scent of promising directions. For example, the invention of the maser was stimulated by Townes’s desire to study the rich molecular spectra at a frequency inaccessible with conventional microwave sources. Unable to scale down conventional microwave cavities to smaller dimensions, he inverted the problem and exploited the quantum properties of the molecular resonators he wanted to study to construct a fundamentally new electromagnetic source. In Townes’s quest for a source of even shorter microwave wavelengths, he writes, “the mathematics governing maser action...suddenly became clear to me: it is just as easy and probably easier to go down to really short wavelengths ...as to simply go down one smaller step at a time. This was a revelation, like stepping through a door into a room I did not suspect existed.” In collaboration at Bell Laboratories with a former postdoc, Arthur Schawlow (who had married Townes’s sister, Aurelia), he then worked out several critical details of the “optical maser.” A chapter entitled “The Patent Game” gives a fascinating account of the patent disputes surrounding the maser and the laser. Townes discusses a series of high-stakes court battles, beginning with litigation by the Research Corp, which held Townes’s maser patent, against Bell Labs, which held Schawlow and Townes’s laser patent. Bell Labs was using maser amplifiers in its satellite communications and threatened to contest the maser patent rather than pay royalties. Spectra Physics, an early laser company, did challenge the maser patent, arguing that it had been filed more than a year after a “publication,” in the form of an internal quarterly report of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory, that had found its way onto the shelves of the Harvard University library. The well-publicized challenges to the Schawlow–Townes laser patent by Gordon Gould, inventor and former graduate student at Columbia University, are also discussed. The facts presented in this book seem consistent with other third-party renditions of the dispute and the court decisions I have reviewed. However, the interpretation of these facts is still a touchy subject, and there remain differences of opinion as to who deserved various patent rights. Unlike the more transparent scientific literature, it may ultimately be impossible to sort out the conflicting claims, since much of the evidence relevant to patents is in private notebooks. Also, legal decisions are often decided by arguments based on a fine-tuned interpretation of the law rather than on scientific merit or common sense. In several cases, for both Townes and Gould, clever and dogged legal representation backed by huge financial resources won the day. Townes also discusses his role in shaping US science and defense policies. In his account of his interactions as an adviser for the military and for NASA, as a founding member of Jason (a group of academic scientists who meet to consider defense and related technical issues), and as vice president and director of research for the Institute for Defense Analyses, we become privy to formerly classified debates in which Townes and other advisers wrestled with science-policy questions and engineering choices. How the Laser Happened is more than a chronicle of a stellar career; it is full of glimpses into the forces that guided Townes. The memoir may not satisfy all of those who contributed to the development of the laser, but then it is unlikely that any account, no matter how even-handed, could satisfy everyone. Readers should relax and savor the frequent moments of reflection, where Townes reveals his personal insights. “I am not at all sure,” Townes writes, “that the public has a clear idea of how scientists get started and how they work.” For young scientists at the beginning of their careers, this book will provide an inspiring case history of how an outstanding physicist got started and went on to do great science.
© 1999 American Institute of Physics
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