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气体激光发明人之一William R. Bennett, Jr.去世

已有 6632 次阅读 2008-7-7 22:45 |个人分类:科学人文|系统分类:人物纪事

气体激光发明人之一William R. Bennett, Jr.去世

2008.07.07

气体激光发明人之一William R. Bennett, Jr.与2008年6月29日因食道癌去世。

小型的氦氖气体激光一般的普通物理实验室都有。William R.Bennett,Jr是它的三位发明人之一。在做博士的时候,我曾经和大型的20瓦的连续氩离子激光器一起工作了四年多。氩离子激光器也是他老先生发明的。William R.Bennett,Jr毕业于普林斯顿大学,于1957年从哥伦比亚大学物理系获得博士学位。

下面是今天《纽约时报》科学版上的讣告。

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The New York Times   July 7, 2008

William R. Bennett, 78, Pioneer in Gas Lasers, Dies

By JEREMY PEARCE

William R. Bennett Jr., a physicist and inventor who helped develop a gas laser in the 1960s in technology that later revolutionized surgery and made possible compact-disc players and grocery-store scanners, died on June 29 at his home in Haverford, Pa. He was 78.

The cause was cancer of the esophagus, his family said.

In the late 1950s, while working at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., Dr. Bennett and a small scientific team assembled a gas laser, the first of its kind able to send out a continuous beam of red light.

The team, which included Donald R. Herriott and Ali Javan, trapped helium and neon in a pressurized tube and agitated the gases’ atoms with an electrical current. Internal mirrors at each end of the tube redirected the resulting particles of light to send them out in a concentrated and continuous beam.

The helium-neon gas laser described by Dr. Bennett and the team in the journal Physical Review Letters in 1961 represented a departure from an earlier laser, which derived its beam from a solid material, synthetic ruby.

Gas lasers have some advantages over those using ruby and other solid materials. For example, although both types are in wide use, gas lasers allow heat to disperse from the laser’s tube relatively rapidly. Dr. Javan and Dr. Bennett received a patent for the gas laser in 1964.

In following years, Dr. Bennett and others experimented with argon, krypton, xenon and similar gases and studied the qualities and burning power of their laser beams. Gas lasers have been used in construction and surveying and to cut or weld materials for industrial applications.

Lasers have also profoundly altered eye surgery and are now commonly used to modify precisely the shape of the cornea and sharpen vision and to halt the progress of macular degeneration and other ocular diseases.

Dr. Bennett left Bell Laboratories and in 1962 joined the newly formed department of physics and applied science at Yale. There, he continued his laser research, studied musical sound, and looked into possible health effects of power lines and electromagnetic fields, a risk he believed to be significantly overrated.

William Ralph Bennett Jr. was born on Jan. 30, 1930, in Jersey City. He graduated from Princeton, then received a doctorate in physics from Columbia in 1957.

In 1964, he was named a professor of physics and applied science at Yale, and remained there for the rest of his career. Dr. Bennett became a professor emeritus of engineering, applied science and physics in 1998. From 1981 to 1987, he was master of Silliman College at Yale.

Among his publications, Dr. Bennett wrote a book, “The Physics of Gas Lasers” (1977). He also wrote a textbook, “Introduction to Computer Applications for Non-Science Students” (1976), that was an early resource in its field.

Dr. Bennett is survived by his wife, the former Frances Commins. The couple were longtime residents of New Haven, and moved to Haverford in 2000. He is also survived by a son, Bill, of Berkeley, Calif.; two daughters, Nancy of Los Angeles and Jean of Bryn Mawr, Pa.; a sister, Carol Anne Valles of Bedford, N.Y.; and five grandchildren.

In the 1970s, Dr. Bennett introduced a popular undergraduate course for humanities and social-science students at Yale, intended to show the problem-solving promise of nascent computers.

A colleague, Werner P. Wolf, a professor emeritus of engineering and applied science at Yale, said the course proved to be both prescient and persuasive, and “made the whole concept of computers exciting.”

Part of the course, Dr. Wolf said, was dedicated to practical challenges; Dr. Bennett told his students to calculate the ballistics of catapulting frozen loaves of bread across the New Haven campus.



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