Tag Archives: Laser

Jews of the Week: Lederman and Ashkin

Two 96-Year Old Nobel Prize Winners

Leon Lederman in 1988

Leon Max Lederman (1922-2018) was born in New York to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants. After serving in World War II, he returned to work on a PhD in physics at Columbia University. He would become a distinguished physics professor there before taking a leave to join the world-renowned CERN in Switzerland. There, he discovered the muon neutrino in 1962. For this, as well as developing the “neutrino beam method”, he would later win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Lederman also discovered the bottom quark. In 1979, Lederman became the director of the prestigious Fermilab, running the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. After retiring in 1989, he was an occasional teacher at the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was also president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1993 he published his bestselling book, The God Particle (coining that now-famous term). Lederman won countless awards and inspired a generation of physicists. Sadly, he was diagnosed with dementia, and the illness took a toll on both his health and his finances. He was forced to sell his Nobel Prize gold medal in order to pay for his medical bills. He passed away last week, at age 96.

Arthur Ashkin

Another 96-year old Jewish scientist who made headlines last week is Arthur Ashkin (b. 1922). He won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of optical tweezers. Like Lederman, Ashkin was born in New York to Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants, and also attended Columbia University. During World War II, he was asked to stay in his lab to build magnetrons for US Army radars. After earning his PhD in nuclear physics at Cornell, Ashkin was hired by Bell Labs. He first worked on microwave technology, then moved on to lasers. After some two decades of work, Ashkin created a working optical tweezer, described as “an old dream of science fiction”. This allows tiny things like atoms, viruses, and cells to be grabbed, moved and manipulated. Today, it is an indispensable tool for countless research facilities around the world. Ashkin also co-discovered the photorefractive effect, and holds a whopping 47 patents. In addition to his many awards, he has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His Nobel at age 96 makes him the oldest person ever to win the prize.

Words of the Week

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle.
– Francis Crick, Nobel Prize-winning biologist

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Jew of the Week: Theodore Maiman

Lasers!

Theodore Maiman

Theodore Maiman

Theodore Harold Maiman (1927-2007) was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Denver. The son of an electrical engineer, Maiman earned money as a teenager by repairing people’s radios and appliances. After a year in the navy, he focused on his studies and eventually earned a Ph.D in physics from Stanford in 1955. He then joined a company under contract to the US Army and led a team working on masers (these are like lasers, but using microwaves). His team was able to improve the maser from a 2.5-ton machine to a small 4 pound device. Building on this success, Maiman convinced his bosses to fund his work on lasers. In 1960, he succeeded in creating the first working laser. Maiman went on to invent a number of other important innovations in the field of optics. He also founded several successful technology and venture capital firms. His paper on lasers was described as “probably more important per word than any of the papers published by Nature over the past century.” Maiman won a handful of prestigious awards for his work, and has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Words of the Week

If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1000 miles per gallon.

– Theodore Maiman