Theodore MaimanDied 5 May 2007 at age 79 (born 11 Jul 1927).Theodore Harold Maiman was an American physicist who built the first working laser. He began working with electronic devices in his teens, while earning college money by repairing electrical appliances and radios. In the 1960s, he developed, demonstrated, and patented a laser using a pink ruby medium. The laser is a device that produces monochromatic coherent light (light in which the rays are all of the same wavelength and phase). The laser has since been applied in a very wide range of uses, including eye surgery, dentistry, range-finding, manufacturing, even measuring the distance between the Earth and the Moon. |
