Holography dates from 1947, when British / Hungarian scientist Dr. Dennis Gabor developed the theory of holography while working to improve the resolution of an electron microscope.
About Dr. Dennis Gábor
(Adapted from his autobiography)
Dr. Dennis Gábor
(b. 1900, Budapest - d. 1979, London)
Nobel Prize in Physics, 1971 for his investigation and development of holography.
Dr. Dennis Gábor was born in Budapest (Hungary) on 5 June 1900. He studied electrical engineering first in Budapest, later in Berlin from Techniscje Hochschule, where he finished his academic education with the award of Doctorate of Engineering in 1927. His doctorate work was the development of one of the first high speed cathode ray oscillographs and in the course of this, made the first iron-shrouded magnetic electron lens. In 1927 he joined Siemens & Halske AG Berlin, where he started investigations on gas discharges and plasmas. The most far reaching result of his six years with Siemens & Halske was his invention of the molybdenum tape seal, which is used to this day in all high-pressure quartz-mercury lamps. In what Dennis calls his “first lesson in serendipity,” he invented the mercury lamp while attempting to develop a cadmium lamp which proved unsuccessful.
In 1934 Gabor went to the British Thomson-Houston Co. Research Laboratory, Rugby, England, on an inventor’s agreement. . His work on gas discharge tubes gave him recognition in the BTH Research Laboratory where he remained until 1948. He also developed a system of stereoscopic cinematography, and in the last year at BTH carried out the basic experiments in holography, called “wave front reconstruction”.
On January 1, 1949 he joined the Imperial College of Science & Technology in London, first as a Reader in Electronics, and later as Professor of Applied Electron Physics, until 1967. From 1949-67 Gabor carried out some 20, mostly experimental, investigations with his Ph.D. assistants. They cleared up the “Langmuir Paradox”; the surprisingly fast apparent establishment of Maxwellian distributions of electrons in a low-pressure plasma, which had worried Gabor for 25 years. They also made a Wilson cloud chamber, in which the velocity of particles became measurable by impressing on them a high frequency, critical field, which produced time marks on the paths, at the points of maximum ionization. They also developed: a holographic microscope; a new electron-velocity spectroscope; an analogue computer which was a universal, non-linear “learning” predictor, recognizer and simulator of time series; a flat, thin color television tube; and a new type of thermionic converter. Theoretical work included communication theory, plasma theory, magnetron theory, and a scheme of fusion.
After his retirement in 1967 he remained connected with the Imperial College as a Senior Research Fellow and became Staff Scientist of CBS Laboratories, Stamford, Conn. where he collaborated with the President, life-long friend, and father of the color television, Dr. Peter C. Goldmark, in many new schemes of communication and display. Though he was always a passionate scientist and inventor, he was almost equally interested in social problems. In his spare time he wrote the books Inventing the Future (1963), Innovations (1970), and The Mature Society (1972).
He wrote, “Though I still have much unfinished technological work on my hands, I consider this as my first priority in my remaining years.”
(Editor’s Note: He passed away on 9 July 1979 in London.)
Honors
• Fellow of the Royal Society, 1956.
• Hon. Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1964.
• D.Sc. Univ. of London, 1964, Hon. D.Sc. Univ. of Southampton, 1970, and Technological University Delft, 1971.
• Thomas Young Medal of Physical Society London, 1967.
• Cristoforo Colombo Prize of Int. Inst. Communications, Genoa, 1967.
• Albert Michelson Medal of The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 1968. Rumford Medal of the Royal Society, 1968.
• Medal of Honor of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers,1970. “ For his ingenious & exciting discovery and verification of the principles of holography”,
• Prix Holweck of the French Physical Society, 1971.
• Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1970.
Links:
Autobiography
http://www.de.nobel.se/laureates/physics-1971-1-autobio.html
Photos:
www.hologram.in
The 1971 Nobel Prize Presentation Speech:
http://www.de.nobel.se/laureates/physics-1971-press.html
An interview with Gabor:
http://www.photonicshistory.com/70-79-4.html
