China.com, October 6 — According to the official website of the Nobel Foundation, the Nobel Prize Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced that the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Hong Kong scientist Charles K. Kao and two American scientists, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith. Scientist Charles K. Kao was awarded for his "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," while Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith were honored for the "invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor."
2009 Nobel Prize in Physics winners Charles K. Kao, Willard Boyle, and George Smith (from left to right)
Charles K. Kao was born in Shanghai, China, in 1933. He currently works at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in the UK and The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith were born in 1924 and 1930, respectively; both scientists conducted their research and worked at Bell Laboratories in the United States. Scientist Charles K. Kao will receive half of the prize money, while Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith will share the remaining half.
Winner Profiles:
Charles Kuen Kao
Charles Kuen Kao, CBE (born November 4, 1933), was born in the Jinshan District of Shanghai, China. He holds British and American citizenship and is a permanent resident of Hong Kong. An expert in fiber optic communications and electrical engineering, he is known as the "Father of Fiber Optics." He is the former Vice-Chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (USA), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK), a member of the Royal Society of Arts (UK), a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, and an academician of the Academia Sinica (Taiwan). In June 1996, he was elected as a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in its second batch.
Chinese scientist Charles K. Kao
Charles K. Kao was born in Shanghai in 1933 and lived in the French Concession. Professor Kao’s father was a lawyer, and the family was relatively wealthy, living in a three-story house where the third floor became Kao’s childhood laboratory. Initially, he was most interested in chemistry and attempted to make homemade bombs. He mixed red phosphorus powder with potassium chlorate, added water to make a paste, mixed it into wet mud, and rolled it into pellets. After they air-dried and were thrown into the street, they indeed exploded. Fortunately, no passersby were injured.
In 1944, he moved to Hong Kong with his father and attended St. Joseph’s College. Later, he was admitted to the University of Hong Kong, but since the university did not yet have an electrical engineering department at the time, he went to the University of London in the UK for further studies. After graduating, he joined International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) as an engineer and was later hired as a researcher in their research laboratory while pursuing his doctorate at the University of London, which he completed in 1965. Starting in 1963, Kao began theoretical and practical research on glass fibers, envisioning the use of glass fibers to transmit laser pulses as a communication method to replace the output of electrical pulses via metal cables.
In 1966, in a paper based on numerous experiments, he proposed that using silica-based glass fibers for long-distance information transmission would bring about a revolution in the communications industry. He suggested that when the loss rate of glass fiber drops to 20 dB/km, fiber optic communication could be successful. His research opened the door to the new era of light guides. For this, he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, as well as the Edison Medal, the Marconi International Prize, the Bell Medal, the Ballantine Medal, the Liebmann Award, and the Optoelectronics Prize.
Willard Boyle and George Smith
Willard Boyle
George Smith
In 1969, George Smith and Willard Boyle of Bell Labs combined video telephony and semiconductor bubble memory technology to design a "Charge ’Bubble’ Device" that could conduct charges along a semiconductor surface, pioneering the prototype of the CCD device. Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith were honored for the "invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor." Boyle and Smith will share the remaining half of the prize money (approximately $700,000).
Boyle was born in Amherst, Canada, in 1924. At the age of 3, he moved with his family to a small village 350 kilometers north of Quebec City. Transportation there was difficult, and travel relied mainly on dog sleds; therefore, before high school, Boyle was homeschooled under his mother’s guidance. Boyle spent his high school years at a private school in Montreal. After graduation, he joined the Royal Canadian Navy and became an aircraft carrier fighter pilot to participate in World War II, but the war ended shortly thereafter, and Boyle never saw actual combat.
In 1950, Boyle returned to school to pursue a doctorate, and three years later, he joined Bell Laboratories in the United States. Today, Boyle is known as one of the two inventors of the CCD image sensor, but he actually made many contributions, including the co-invention of the first ruby continuous laser in 1962. Boyle also obtained the first patent for the concept of a semiconductor injection laser with another scientist. Today, the recording and playback of Compact Discs (CDs) mostly rely on semiconductor laser technology.
Smith was born in New York, USA, in 1930. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago. After graduating with his PhD in 1959, Smith joined Bell Laboratories. Initially, his research focus was on the electrical properties and band structure of semiconductors. In 1964, Smith became the head of the Device Concepts Department at Bell Labs, which was established to study next-generation solid-state devices. In 1969, Smith and Boyle co-invented the CCD image sensor.
Smith has authored more than 40 scientific papers and holds 31 patents in the United States. Due to Smith’s outstanding contributions, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) established an award named after him in 2002.
At the time, Bell Labs was developing video telephones and semiconductor bubble memory. By combining these two new technologies, Boyle and Smith derived a device they named "Charge ’Bubble’ Devices." The characteristic of this device was its ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor. They initially tried to use it as a memory device, where memory could only be input by "injecting" charge from a register. However, it was soon discovered that the photoelectric effect could cause charges to be generated on the surface of such components, thereby forming digital images.
Dr. Willard Boyle and George Smith (right)
By the 1970s, researchers at Bell Labs were able to capture images using simple linear devices, and the CCD was born. Several companies followed up on this invention and began further research, including Fairchild Semiconductor, RCA, and Texas Instruments. Fairchild Semiconductor’s products were the first to hit the market, releasing a 500-element linear device and a 100x100 pixel planar device in 1974.
In January 2006, Boyle and Smith were awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in recognition of their contributions to the development of the CCD.
Source: http://news.sina.com.cn/z/2009Nobel/index.shtml
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