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H. Maiman为何未能获得诺贝尔物理学奖？（转载）
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杰出的工程师和物理学家，世界上第一台激光器的设计师H. Maiman，曾经两次被提名，但最终为何未能获得诺贝尔物理学奖？
从以下的参考文献，也许可以窥见一斑：
参考文献1：
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/obituaries/11maiman.html?_r=2&ref=science&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Theodore Maiman, 79, Dies; Demonstrated First Laser
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By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: May 11, 2007
Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist who on May 16, 1960, demonstrated the world’s first laser, a device small enough to fit in his hand, died on May 5 in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was 79.
The cause was systemic mastocytosis, a rare genetic disorder, his wife, Kathleen, said.
Lasers, which have become ubiquitous in the years since the first one, are machines that amplify light waves of atoms that have been stimulated to radiate, then shoot them out as narrow, intense beams of light. They are used to read CDs and bar codes, guide missiles, remove ulcers, fabricate steel, precisely measure the distance from Earth to the Moon, record ultradefined images of brain tissue, entertain people in light shows and do thousands of other things.
But on July 7, 1960, when Dr. Maiman demonstrated the laser he had built at a news conference in Manhattan, none of this was known, only conjectured by a few visionaries. Leading laboratories around the world had nonetheless raced to be first, with the Hughes Aircraft Company, Dr. Maiman’s employer, winning.
“A laser is a solution seeking a problem,” he said.
Thought leading to the development of the laser, which is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, goes back to Einstein and continues through Charles H. Townes and Arthur L. Schawlow, scientists at Bell Laboratories whose 1958 paper, “Infrared and Optical Masers” was enormously influential. Gordon Gould, in 1957 as a graduate student, came up with important concepts, as well as the word laser.
It was Dr. Maiman, who was trained in both engineering and physics, who first actually built one, at a time other efforts were flagging. One of his breakthroughs was the use of artificial rubies as the active medium. Others had judged that rubies did not work and were trying various gases. Dr. Maiman found errors in their calculations.
He also used pulses of light to excite atoms in the ruby. The laser thus produced only a short flash of light, rather than a continuous wave. But because so much energy was released so fast, it provided considerably more power than in past experiments.
This first laser, tiny in power compared with later versions, shone with the brilliance of a million suns. Its beam spread less in one mile than a flashlight beam spreads when directed across the room. Scientists call laser light “coherent light.”
Dr. Maiman published his discovery in the British journal Nature, after the journal Physical Review Letters mistakenly rejected it as repetitive. In a book marking the centennial of Nature, Dr. Townes called the short article “the most important per word of any of the wonderful papers” that the prestigious journal had published in its 100 years.
Theodore Harold Maiman was born in Los Angeles on July 11, 1927, and grew up mainly in Denver. His father, Abraham, was an electrical engineer who worked on inventions, included improvements to the stethoscope. Abraham wanted his son to be a doctor, but Theodore came to feel he had contributed more to medicine with the laser, which was quickly adapted to eye surgery and then to myriad other medical uses.
Theodore was rambunctious as a boy and aspired to being a comedian, but he was also very good at math. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering physics from the University of Colorado and completed a doctorate in physics at Stanford in 1955. His adviser was Willis E. Lamb, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics.
He went to work for Hughes and after some military contracts fell through, worked on the predecessor to the laser, the maser, which concentrated microwaves, not light. He made a five-pound maser that could do the work of a two-ton one.
He told his bosses he wanted to make a laser, but they were wary of discouraging reports from other laboratories and said no.
They wanted him to work on computers, or “something useful,” his wife said. But he threatened to quit and build a laser in his garage.
So the Hughes executives gave him nine months, $50,000 and an assistant. The assistant was Charles Asawa, who had the idea of illuminating the ruby with a photographic flash, rather than with the movie projector lamp first used.
After Dr. Maiman succeeded, a news release predicted that doctors would use lasers to focus on a single human cell. For the rest of his life, Dr. Maiman insisted on emphasizing the laser’s healing possibilities, even as the public was riveted on the new “death ray.”
But Hughes did not pursue any of the laser’s possibilities aggressively enough to suit Dr. Maiman, and he left to start his own company, the Korad Corporation, in 1961. He later started two more companies to develop laser products.
Dr. Maiman was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize and won many other awards, including the Japan Prize and the Wolf Prize in Physics. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1984, and he published the story of his discovery of the laser in “The Laser Odyssey” (2000).
In addition to his wife, the former Kathleen Heath, he is survived by his stepdaughter, Cynthia Sanford of San Luis Obispo, Calif., and a granddaughter.
A memorial tribute is planned for May 16, the anniversary of the first time a laser was ever fired.
参考文献2：
http://www.ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/people.php?id=1234591&lid=1
Theodore H. Maiman
Born: 11 July 1927
Dr. Ted Maiman, constructor of the first working laser. Courtesy: HRL Laboratories, LLC.
Theodore Maiman is famous for inventing the first functioning laser in the world in 1960. He has been called “the father of the electro-optics industry,” but Maiman considers himself a scientist and an engineer, with research interests in electro-optics, lasers, displays, and aerodynamics. In addition to his patent on the first working laser, the ruby laser, Maiman also holds patents on masers, laser displays, optical scanning, and laser modulation. Maiman was born in 1927 in Los Angeles, California. Interested in technology at an early age, he worked for a time as a radio and appliance repairman. In part, Maiman’s later academic pursuits were inspired by his father, an electronics engineer and an inventor. Maiman began his academic studies at the University of Colorado and earned a B.S. degree in engineering physics in 1949. Two years later he attended Stanford University and obtained a master’s degree in electrical engineering and then a doctorate in physics in 1955. In 1960 Maiman invented the first functioning laser in the world while working at Hughes Aircraft Company. His invention was influenced by an article by Arthur L. Schawlow and Charles H. Townes, “Infrared and Optical Masers,” which appeared in The Physics Review in 1958. In their article the two scholars laid out a theoretical basis for the laser construction and outlined some of its problematic aspects. Maiman became the winner of the race to create the laser, which began in 1959. In addition to the work done at Hughes, other institutions such as Bell Labs, RCA Labs, Lincoln Labs, IBM, Westinghouse, and Siemens also engaged in the project. Maiman, after nine months of creative, yet hard and under-funded, labor succeeded first. The inventor himself explains the success by such factors as his favorable academic background (in electronics and optics), quest for simplicity, unconventional thinking, and a “maverick spirit.” In 1962 Maiman established his own enterprise, Korad Corporation, which undertook the development and manufacture of lasers. In 1968, after selling the company to Union Carbide Corporation, Maiman founded Maiman Associates. He is currently a director of Control Laser Corporation and a member of the advisory board of Industrial Research Magazine. Throughout his career, Maiman received many awards. He was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize and was given membership in both National Academies of Science and Engineers. He was also a recipient of 1983/1984 Physics Prize, the same year he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Three years later he became laureate of the prestigious Japan Prize, the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
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