THEODORE H. MAIMAN (1927-2007)

BY ANDREW H. RAWICZ AND NICK HOLONYAK JR.

THEODORE HAROLD MAIMAN died on May 5, 2007, leaving a profound legacy in the form of the laser, which affects so many aspects of all of our lives. The laser, that great scientific and engineering breakthrough, was born on May 16, 1960. Ted, assisted by master’s student Irnee D’Haenens, pushed the button on a homemade high-voltage power supply, and a small, tubular, ruby-based device shone a short pulse of a powerful red light, projected as a spot on the wall of Maiman’s laboratory at Hughes Research Labs in Malibu, California. With the help of D’Haenens and C.K. Asawa, Maiman measured the emitted spectral line width, and the outcome was clear: proof of light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. This was the laser, humankind’s first creation of coherent light.

Ted was born in Los Angeles, California, on July 11, 1927. Almost immediately thereafter his parents moved to Denver, Colorado, where his father Abe, an electrical engineer and prolific inventor, had obtained a job at the Mountain States Telephone Company. Abe Maiman always kept a small electronics laboratory in the family’s home, and Theodore used it for advancing his technical and scientific knowledge, mainly by imaginative destruction (reverse engineering) of some of the mysterious devices lying around, including his father’s oscilloscope. With this acquired knowledge he started his first paying job in an electronics shop, repairing appliances and radios. When the owner went to serve in World War II, Theodore, at age 13, took over the shop. He continued working there in high school, saving money for his college education, and he added clarinet lessons to his extracurricular activities as well as playing in the school band. Near the end of the war, at age 17, Theodore enlisted in the U.S. Army against his father’s wishes. He was quickly accepted into the Army’s radar and telecommunications training program — an experience that strengthened his knowledge of electronics.

He did undergraduate coursework in both engineering and physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, graduating with a B.S. in engineering physics. From there he entered the physics graduate program at Columbia University, during which he took physics courses at Stanford, which had rejected him earlier, leading to his acceptance into Stanford’s physics Ph.D. program.

Maiman did his Stanford research under the direction of Willis Lamb, who took him on because of his ability to understand the mathematical formulations of physical hypotheses and convert them into experiments to prove (or disprove) their validity. Maiman worked through extreme experimental challenges to unequivocally demonstrate the hypothesized “Lamb shift” in helium. Maiman received his Ph.D. in 1955; Lamb received a Nobel Prize in Physics later that year, based in part on the laboratory proof of the Lamb shift.

In addition to his deep native intelligence, Ted received an excellent combination of attributes in his education. His informal education started when he experimented in his father’s laboratory and continued when he worked as an electronic-appliance repairman. His formal education involved both engineering and physics. Engineering gave him the background for efficient and elegant design, and physics provided a deep and full understanding of what he was doing. His early experiences gave him an intuitive sense of cause-and-effect that, in turn, saved Ted time in choosing approaches, a factor that became especially important in the race to invent the laser. He was curious and easily motivated, and then persistent (some might say stubborn) in pursuing his goals.

Ted chose to work in industry after receiving his Ph.D. After an around-the-world cruise of 80 days, he did a short stint at Lockheed Martin’s Aerospace Division before moving to the Hughes Research Laboratories in Culver City, California, to work in the newly created Atomic Physics Department, whose mandate was to push the practical limits of the coherent electromagnetic spectrum to shorter wavelengths. The U.S. Army Signal Corps had awarded a contract to Hughes to build a state-of-the-art microwave amplifier known as a ruby maser, improving on the size, weight, cost, and stability of the existing maser. Maiman was selected to head the new project. Under his leadership the design of the ruby-based maser was dramatically improved in all aspects.

While the possibility of stimulated emission was first postulated by Albert Einstein in 1917, the idea largely sat in the literature until 1958, when Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes published a paper that revived the dreams of making a coherent light source. Several groups of first-class scientists in the United States and around the world secured generous funding and started their work to make a laser.

Maiman was still finishing his ruby maser project when interest in the laser heated up, so he was months behind others in joining the effort. He approached managers at Hughes, seeking funding to pursue development of a laser. Despite the scarcity of discretionary research funding, Maiman’s bosses gave him $50,000, one half-time technician, and nine months to work on the laser, a shoestring effort relative to that of the other groups in the race.

Maiman’s practical experience with the just-completed maser project proved to be an advantage. He understood that the design must be simple, not use cryogenic cooling, and rely on readily available components and materials. He also knew well the optical properties of synthesized pink (lightly doped) ruby and considered it to be a potential lasing medium, although other luminaries in the field thought it to be unsuitable. Ted’s deep understanding of engineering principles, coupled with his knowledge of important technical issues that needed to be addressed, led him to select a fortuitous set of parameters for his attempt at making a laser – a relatively short crystal, use of the strongest spiral photographic flash lamp he could get, and additional focusing of the light from the flash lamp provided by a polished aluminum cylinder surrounding the flash lamp spiral. The entire device was small enough to be held in the palm of the inventor’s hand.

When they saw a dramatic increase in output on May 16, 1960, they confirmed laser action by observing the spectral width of the emitted light, demonstrating that it consisted of only one of two fluorescent modes, as Maiman had predicted in his earlier calculations.

Maiman left Hughes less than a year after making the first laser, founding a company called Korad Corporation, which he headed for several years before being bought out. Korad also developed and manufactured a line of high-powered laser equipment and became the market leader in its field. For example, the ruby laser created at Korad led to lunar laser ranging in 1969. Subsequently he formed Maiman Associates, a management consulting firm that provided technical and management advisory services in high-technology fields. He also co-founded Laser Video Inc., where he developed unique large-screen, laser-driven color video displays. From 1976 to 1983, Maiman was vice president of advanced technology and new ventures for the electronics and defense sector of TRW. He was instrumental in organizing and launching TRW's commercial LSI Products Division, and he introduced fiber-optics technology and advanced array processor products to the company.

In 1999 he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife Kathleen. In 2000, Maiman completed a memoir entitled The Laser Odyssey (Laser Press), outlining the years and months leading up to the completion of the first laser, and his later achievements. Before his death, he was active in the development of the optical engineering and biophotonics curriculum at Simon Fraser University’s School of Engineering Science.

For his remarkable contribution to science, Maiman received a number of prestigious international awards and prizes, including the Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Award for physical science (1966), presented by President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in 1984 and the Japan Prize in 1987. He also received many honorary doctorates from eminent universities around the world. The last was in 2002 from British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University.

In addition to his wife, the former Kathleen Heath, he is survived by his stepdaughter, Cynthia Sanford of San Luis Obispo, California, and a granddaughter.

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Adapted with permission from Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, available online at www.nasonline.org/memoirs. For more information about Theodore Maiman, see his memoir, The Laser Inventor: Memoirs of Theodore H. Maiman (Springer, 2018).