Charles H. Townes

Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. Townes was an adviser to the U.S. Government, meeting every President from Harry S. Truman (1945) to Bill Clinton (1999).

Townes directed the U.S. government's Science and Technology Advisory Committee for the Apollo lunar landing program. After becoming a professor of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967, he began an astrophysical program that produced several important discoveries, for example, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Townes was religious, and believed that science and religion are converging to provide a greater understanding of the nature and purpose of the universe.

Notable works: maser Awards: Guggenheim Fellowship, Niels Bohr International Gold Medal, Nobel Prize in Physics, Frederic Ives Medal, Stuart Ballantine Medal, Templeton Prize, SPIE Gold Medal, IEEE David Sarnoff Award, Lomonosov Gold Medal, Petrie Prize Lecture Education: California Institute of Technology, Duke University, Furman University, Greenville High School

Source: Wikipedia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Townes