Theodore Maiman

Theodore Maiman (1927-2007), American physicist who demonstrated the world’s first laser, a device that emits a concentrated beam of light. Lasers have since become important in everyday devices, such as CD and DVD players and supermarket barcode scanners, as well as in manufacturing, surgery, fiber-optic communications, and other applications.

Theodore Harold Maiman was born in Los Angeles and attended the University of Colorado and Stanford University. In May 1960, while working at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, he successfully produced the first pulse of coherent light from a laser. He used a synthetic ruby as the laser medium, in the form of a rod with reflective silver at one end, placed inside an aluminum cylinder. The beam was powered by a photographic flash lamp.

Maiman had previously worked with the physicist Charles Townes, developer of the maser, a device that amplifies microwaves. Townes and a team of researchers at Bell Laboratories had attempted to create a maser that would use light energy but had not been successful at the time of Maiman’s breakthrough. However, Maiman’s work was not widely recognized. Townes was awarded a patent for the laser in 1960 and won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1964.

Maiman’s pioneering role in the invention of the laser only received recognition many years later. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1984. His book about the race to build the first laser, called The Laser Odyssey, was published in 2000.