BERKELEY, Calif. — Charles H. Townes, the co-inventor of the laser and a Nobel laureate in physics who unapologetically spoke of his strong spiritual faith, has died. He was 99.
Officials at the University of California, Berkeley, where Townes was a professor emeritus who only last year stopped going to campus every day, said he had been in poor health before he died Tuesday on the way to an Oakland hospital.
Townes was a faculty member at Columbia University when he did most of the work that would make him one of three scientists to share the 1964 Nobel Prize in physics for research leading to the creation of the laser. The others were Russian physicists Aleksandr M. Prokhorov and Nicolai G. Basov.
Townes’ research, the basis of which he often said came to him like a religious revelation, applied the microwave technique used in wartime radar research to the study of spectroscopy, the dispersion of an object’s light into its component colors.
He envisioned that would provide a new window into the structure of atoms and molecules and a new basis for controlling electromagnetic waves. His insights eventually led to the first laser and eventual applications for medicine, astronomy and telecommunications.