Anthony E. Siegman

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Anthony Edward Siegman (born November 23, 1931 in Detroit , Michigan , † October 7, 2011 in Stanford , California ) was an American physicist and electrical engineer , known for contributions to laser physics and optics.

Life

Siegman, born in Detroit in 1931, studied at Harvard University ( bachelor's degree in 1952 summa cum laude ) and at the University of California, Los Angeles , where he received his master's degree in applied physics in 1954 . From 1952 to 1954 he was also with Hughes Aircraft . From 1954 he was an assistant at the electronics laboratory at Stanford University . In 1957 he received his doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford under Dean Watkins with a dissertation on microwave noise in traveling wave tubes. In 1956 he was an assistant professor at Stanford University and stayed there for the rest of his career, most recently as McMurty Professor of Electrical Engineering . Since attending the first quantum electronics conference (organized by Charles Townes immediately before the invention of the laser, the idea of ​​which was in the air) in Shawanga Lodge in the Catskills in September 1959, he has dealt with lasers. From 1978 to 1983 he was director of the Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford. In 1998 he retired. In 1965 he was visiting professor at Harvard University, 1969/70 as a Guggenheim Fellow at the IBM laboratories in Zurich and 1984/85 as Humboldt Senior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich .

In 1999/2000 he was President of the Optical Society of America , whose RW Wood Prize (1980) and whose Frederic Ives Medal (1987) he received. In 1977 he received the JJ Ebers Award from the IEEE Electron Devices Society and in 1989 the Quantum Electronics Award from the IEEE LEOS, in 2009 the Esther Hoffman Beller Medal and in 1991 the Arthur L. Schawlow Award .

In 1961, together with Bill Louisell and Amnon Yariv, he gave the first description of noise in parametric oscillators (amplifiers), and from this in 1968 optical parametric oscillators developed as a photon source and widely used source of entangled photon pairs in experiments on the fundamentals of quantum mechanics.

He is especially known for the invention of the so-called unstable optical resonator , which is used, for example, in gas lasers for high power and beam quality.

His book Lasers from 1986 is one of the standard works in this field and comprises around 1300 pages. Siegman was known for his ability to present complex issues clearly.

Siegman published around 250 scientific articles and three textbooks. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1984), the National Academy of Sciences (1988) and the National Academy of Engineering (1973) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . Siegman was a fellow of the IEEE, the Optical Society of America, the Laser Institute of America, and the American Physical Society . From 1974 to 1980 he was a member of the US Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.

Stephen E. Harris was one of his 40 or so doctoral students . One of his earliest students in the laser field was Burt McMurtry, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who later served on the Stanford University Board of Trustees.

He was married to Jeannie Siegman and had a son and two daughters and a stepdaughter. He was a passionate outdoor activist (hiking, skiing).

Fonts

  • Microwave solid state masers , McGraw Hill 1964
  • An introduction to masers and lasers , McGraw Hill 1971
  • Lasers , University Science Books 1986
  • with IP Kaminow (editor) Lasers and their Applications , IEEE Press 1973 (reprints)
  • Unstable optical resonators , Applied Optics, Volume 13, 1974, pp. 353-367

literature

  • Stephen E. Harris: Anthony E. Siegman: Laser pioneer, Optical Society president, friend, and colleague . In: Proc Natl Acad Sci . tape 109 , no. 5 , January 31, 2012, p. 1379 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1120221109 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data according to American Men and Woman of Science , Thomson Gale, 22nd edition 2005
  2. ^ The Optical Society Mourns the Loss of Anthony E. Siegman. OSA, October 13, 2011, accessed February 5, 2018 .
  3. ^ Past JJ Ebers Award Winners. (No longer available online.) Ieee.org, archived from the original on January 9, 2013 ; accessed on February 5, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / eds.ieee.org
  4. ^ Quantum Electronics Award Winners. IEEE Photonics Society, accessed on February 5, 2018 : "For his numerous contributions to the field of quantum electronics, including the invention of the unstable optical resonator and for contributions to the theory of mode-locked lasers."
  5. ↑ Louisell, Yariv, Siegman, Quantum Fluctuations and Noise in Parametric Processes I, Phys. Rev., Vol. 124, 1961, p. 1646, abstract
personal data
SURNAME Siegman, Anthony E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Siegman, Anthony Edward (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 23, 1931
PLACE OF BIRTH Detroit , Michigan
DATE OF DEATH October 7, 2011
Place of death Stanford , California