An engineering graduate of Woolwich Polytechnic in east London has been awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Charles Kuen Kao, a Chinese-born Briton, was awarded half of the prize for being the first person to develop efficient fibre optic cables.
As a result of his work more than 1 billion kilometres of optical cables carry lightning fast broadband internet data to and from households and offices around the world.
Two US physicists, Willard Sterling Boyle and George Smith, from Bell Labs in New Jersey, shared the second half of the prize for inventing the first digital imaging technology. Their work made digital cameras possible and has led to huge advances in medical and astronomical imaging technology. In a telephone interview to the Nobel Prize press conference Professor Boyle said he had “a lovely feeling all over his body” when he received the phone call from the Nobel Foundation”.
“I see people using these little digital cameras all over the world and we started it all,” he said.
Professor Kao will receive half of the 10m Swedish kronor (£818,000) prize money, while Professors Smith and Boyle will take a quarter each.
Announcing the laureates at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Nobel assembly said the research "had helped to shape the foundations of today's networked societies. They have created many practical innovations for everyday life and provided new tools for scientific exploration".
Professor Kao, who attended what is now called the University of Greenwich in the 1950s, carried out his Nobel-prize winning research while working at Standard Telephones and Cables in Harlow, now owned by the telecommunications multinational Nortel.
When he began his investigation in the 1960s, fibre optics were only capable of transmitting light tens of metres before it petered out. Through a series of precise and methodical experiments Professor Kau identified the chief limiting factor was the absorption of light by iron impurities in the glass.
In a seminal paper in 1966, published only a year after he was awarded his PhD, Professor Kao suggested that glass fibres made from fused silica could represent “a new form of communication medium”. His suggestion sparked an intense worldwide race to produce glass fibres with low optical losses.
Professor Sir Peter Knight, Senior Principal at Imperial College London, said: “Kao was the first to understand the impurities in glass and how to get rid of them. He had already spotted the communications opportunities, and therefore the great distances light could travel, while others were still thinking in metres. He was a revolutionary and his work is a fine example of how fundamental research can have a massive impact on our everyday lives.”
As a result of his findings, modern fibre optics transmit 95 per cent of the light, allowing long-range, rapid communication.
Baroness Blackstone, Vice Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, said that the award would be inspirational to young scientists studying there today.
“Charles Kao’s enormous success shows that former polytechnics do still produce people who make incredible contributions. He will not be the only person in this category,” she said.
While Professor Kao’s discovery was the outcome of several years’ hard graft, Professor Boyle said that he and his co-worker Smith came up with the design for a digital imaging device within the space of a day in 1969. “It was easy that morning when we sketched out on a blackboard a diagram for the CCD,” he said.
The device, which makes use of Einstein’s discovery that photons of light can be turned into an electrical signal, has had an array of medical applications, such as the development of endoscopes to gain images inside the body for diagnostics and keyhole surgery. In astronomy, the Hubble telescope records its vivid images of distant galaxies and supernovas on CCDs, as did the robotic Mars rovers.
Professor Martin Barstow, Professor of Astrophysics and Space Science at the University of Leicester, said: "The invention of the CCD has had a major impact on all our lives, revolutionising our ability to record, process and share images. From YouTube to the Hubble Space Telescope: these devices are now at the heart of our digital video and still cameras and underpin the extraordinary progress made in astronomy during the past 20-30 years."
The Nobel Prizes for chemistry, literature, peace and economics will be announced during the next week. This year's medicine Nobel, announced on Monday was given to Elizabeth Blackburn, Jack W. Szostak and Carol Greider for work on how chromosomes protect themselves as cells divide, research that has inspired cancer therapies and may offer insights into aging.
source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk
No comments:
Post a Comment