Physical Review Records the Birth of the Laser Era

OCT 01, 1993

The first paper reporting an operating laser was rejected by Physical Review Letters in 1960. Now lasers are a huge and growing industry, but the pioneers’ chief motivation was the physics.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881380

Nicolaas Bloembergen

The historical development of masers and lasers has been well documented in several books. It is not my purpose here to recapitulate or improve on those accounts, which focus on the roles individual scientists, industry and funding agencies played in the evolution of the laser.

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More about the authors

Nicolaas Bloembergen, Harvard University.