BOOK OF APRIL

Title         : LASER - A German Success Story

Author     : Ernst Peter Fischer
Publisher : Siedler Verlag
Price        : EUR 22,95
ISBN        : 978-3886809462

2010 marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of LASER. Every time we give a presentation using a laser pointer, see a laser light show, watch a DVD or benefit from bloodless surgery or laser eye correction, we are profiting from this single dicovery which is “Light Amplified Stimulation of Radiation”. It was discovered by Theodor Maiman, the American Physicist in 1960.

Though it was discovered Maiman, it was only the outcome of a series of developments. It was actually the experimental verification of the concept of stimulated emission, presented by Albert Einstein in 1917. Maiman’s functional LASER used a solid-state flashlamp-pumped synthetic ruby crystal to produce red laser light and hence it was known as the “Ruby LASER”.

The MASER, a precursor to the laser, was developed in 1954 by Charles Townes and independently verified by Nicolay Basov and Alexandr Prokhorov. So, in the early technical literature, especially in that of the Bell Telephone Laboratories researchers, the LASER was also called the “Optical MASER”, a currently uncommon term, moreover, since 1998, Bell Laboratories adopted the LASER usage.

When lasers were invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem".Since then, they have become ubiquitous, finding utility in thousands of highly varied applications in every section of modern society, including consumer electronics, information technology, science, medicine, industry, law enforcement, entertainment, and the military.

In this 50th Birthday of the LASER, Ernst Peter Fischer tells how scientists made the focused light available and therefore writes it as a German success story. Ernst Peter Fischer, born in 1947 in Wuppertal, Germany, studied mathematics, physics and biology and received his doctorate in 1977 at the California Institute of Technology. For his work he received several prizes including the Prize of the Sartorius Academy of Sciences in Gottingen.

(Book Review Text Courtesy: http://www.amazon.de/, http://www.50-jahre-laser.com/, http://www.followtopia.com/)