Charles H. Townes

Who was Charles H. Townes?

Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American physicist. 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. Charles Hard Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina, the son of Henry Keith Townes Sr. (1876–1958), an attorney, and Ellen Sumter Hard (1881–1980). 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. 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.

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

Historical significance

He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov.