Nobel Prize 1964: "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"
Charles Townes, J.P. Gordon, H.J. Zeiger, A.L. Schawlow. "Molecular Microwave Oscillator and New Hyperfine Structure in the Microwave Spectrum of NH3." the Physical Review, Vol. 95, No. 1, pp. 282-284; July 1, 1954. Nearly-fine copy, in the original wrappers.
Offered With:
A.L. Schawlow, C.H. Townes."Infrared and Optical Masers", in the Physical Review, Vol. 112, No. 6, pp. 1940-1949, December 15, 1958. A very good copy, in original wrappers. (With a name in pen at top right corner of the front cover.)
And Offered With:
J.P. Gordon, H.J. Zeiger, C.H. Townes. "The Maser - New type of Microwave Amplifier, Frequency Standard, and Spectrometer." In the Physical Review, August 15, 1955, pp 1264-1273. In the original wrapper. A very good copy, with a small bit of scuffing on the front wrapper, and the original owner's name on the upper corner top right front wrapper.
FIRST EDITIONS of three landmark papers by Charles Townes on the development of the laser. The three : SOLD
"The laser is an outgrowth of a suggestion made by Albert Einstein in 1916 that under the proper circumstances atoms could release excess energy as light—either spontaneously or when stimulated by light. German physicist Rudolf Walther Ladenburg first observed stimulated emission in 1928, although at the time it seemed to have no practical use.
"In 1951 Charles H. Townes, then at Columbia University in New York City, thought of a way to generate stimulated emission at microwave frequencies. At the end of 1953, he demonstrated a working device that focused “excited” (see below Energy levels and stimulated emissions) ammonia molecules in a resonant microwave cavity, where they emitted a pure microwave frequency. Townes named the device a maser, for “microwave amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation.” Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Prokhorov and Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov of the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow independently described the theory of maser operation. For their work all three shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physics.
"An intense burst of maser research followed in the mid-1950s, but masers found only a limited range of applications as low-noise microwave amplifiers and atomic clocks. In 1957 Townes proposed to his brother-in-law and former postdoctoral student at Columbia University, Arthur L. Schawlow (then at Bell Laboratories), that they try to extend maser action to the much shorter wavelengths of infrared or visible light. Townes also had discussions with a graduate student at Columbia University, Gordon Gould, who quickly developed his own laser ideas. Townes and Schawlow published their ideas for an “optical maser” in a seminal paper in the December 15, 1958, issue of Physical Review. Meanwhile, Gould coined the word laser and wrote a patent application. Whether Townes or Gould should be credited as the “inventor” of the laser thus became a matter of intense debate and led to years of litigation. Eventually, Gould received a series of four patents starting in 1977 that earned him millions of dollars in royalties.
Comments