Charles Kuen Kao, widely regarded as the “Father of Fiber Optic Communications”, was awarded half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication” which was called “masters of light,” because they found new ways of handling and capturing light by the Nobel Committee.
Two other researchers at Bell Laboratories, in New Jersey, the American George Smith and a Canadian-American Willard Boyle have received a quarter of the prize for developing “charge-coupled devices”.
Kao’s discovery of imperfections in early fiber-optic cables made it possible to create the long fiber-optic cables that are the backbone of today’s phone networks and the Internet.
More: BBC, Guardian. Photo credit top: Nortel; photo credit centre: BBC.
