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华裔科学家高锟和两位美国科学家分别因光纤通讯的研究和CCD图像传感器荣获2009年诺贝尔物理学奖。
A Chinese-born Briton who graduated from Woolwich Polytechnic in east London and became director of research at a mobile phone company in Essex has won this year’s Nobel prize for physics. Charles Kuen Kao won half of the famous prize for research that allowed information to be sent in beams of light along glass fibres over distances of 100km and more. The research revolutionised modern communications.
Kao shares the prize with George Smith, an American, and Willard Boyle, a Canadian-American, at Bell Labs in New Jersey, who developed the charged-coupled device (CCD), more familiarly known as the miniature digital cameras now ubiquitous in devices as wide-ranging as mobile phones and spacecraft.
Fiber optic cables and lasers capable of sending pulses of light down them already existed when Dr. Kao started working on fiber optics. But at that time, the light pulses could travel only about 20 meters through the glass fibers before 99 percent of the light had dissipated. His goal was to extend the 20 meters to a kilometer. At the time, many researchers thought tiny imperfections, like holes or cracks in the fibers, were scattering the light.
In January 1966, Dr. Kao, then working at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in England, presented his findings. It was not the manufacturing of the fiber that was at fault, but rather that the ingredient for the fiber—the glass—was not pure enough. A purer glass made of fused quartz would be more transparent, allowing the light to pass more easily. In 1970, researchers at Corning Glass Works were able to produce an ultrapure optical fiber more than a half-mile long.
A news release from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where Dr. Kao worked as a professor and later a vice chancellor, quoted Dr. Kao’s reaction: “This is very, very unexpected. Fiber optics has changed the world of information so much in these last 40 years. It certainly is due to the fiber optical networks that the news has traveled so fast.” According to the academy in its prize announcement, without Dr. Gao’s invention, the optical cables in use today, would equal a fiber more than 600 million miles long. In September 1969, Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., sketched out an idea on a blackboard in Dr. Boyle’s office. “He had a bigger office than me,” Dr. Smith recalled in a telephone interview. “The two of us frequently got together just to kick ideas around.” Their idea takes advantage of the photoelectric effect, which was explained by Albert Einstein and won him the Nobel in 1921. When light hits a piece of silicon, it knocks out electrons. The brighter the light, the more electrons are knocked out.
In a CCD, the knocked-out electrons are gathered in small wells, where they are counted—essentially one pixel of an image. The data from an array of CCDs can then be reconstructed as an image. Besides consumer cameras, CCDs also made possible the cosmic panoramas from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Martian postcards taken by NASA landers.
The 10m Swedish kronor (￡818,000) prize money has been divided to give half to Kao, with Smith and Boyle taking a quarter each. Announcing the award at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Nobel assembly credited Kao for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication”. Smith and Boyle were honoured “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor”.
Speaking by phone to a press conference at the Karolinska Institute, Boyle said: “I have a lovely feeling all over my body.” The Nobel assembly said the research “helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies. They have created many practical innovations for everyday life and provided new tools for scientific exploration”.
Optical fibres make up the circulatory system of our communication-based society. The glass fibres allow for global broadband communications including the internet. Light flowing in thin threads of glass carries almost all of the telephony and data traffic. Text, music, images and video can be transferred around the globe in a split second.
The CCD is the digital camera’s electronic eye. It revolutionised photography, allowing light to be captured electronically instead of on film. The technology is used in many medical applications, such as imaging inside the human body for both diagnostics and microsurgery.
一位华裔英籍科学家荣获了今年的诺贝尔物理学奖,他毕业于伦敦东部的沃尔维奇理工学院,曾担任埃塞克斯某移动电话公司的研究部主任。此人就是查尔斯·高琨,他通过研究,让信息可以在光束中沿玻璃纤维传输达100公里以上,并由此赢得了2009年诺贝尔物理学奖一半的奖金。该项研究彻底改变了现代通信。
和高琨一起分享这一奖项的还有美国人乔治·史密斯和加拿大裔美国人威拉德·博伊尔,他们都在新泽西州贝尔实验室工作,他们还开发了电荷耦合器件(CCD),这种器件更为熟知的应用是目前广泛用于移动电话和航天器等设备中的微型数码相机。
当高锟开始研究光纤学时,光缆和能在光缆中发射光脉冲的激光已经存在。但那时,光脉冲在玻璃光纤中传输约20米后,99%的光能就已经损耗掉了。高锟的目标是把这个距离从20米延长到1千米。当时,许多研究者认为,是光纤中的小瑕疵,如漏洞和裂缝有一些小阻碍,导致了光的散射。
1966年1月,高博士在英国电讯标准实验室工作时提出了他的研究成果。他认为,问题不在光纤制造技艺上,而是光纤的成分——玻璃纯度不够。用熔凝石英制造的更为精纯的玻璃将会更加通透,光在其中穿行也就更为容易。1970年,康宁玻璃厂的研究者生产出了半英里多的超纯光纤。
高博士曾在香港中文大学担任教授后来成为副校长,校方发布的一则新闻引述了高博士对光纤的评价:“这非常出乎意料。在过去的40年里光纤重塑了信息世界。毫无疑问,正是由于光纤网络的铺设,新闻才能传播得如此迅捷。”瑞典皇家科学院在颁奖典礼上说,如果没有高锟的发明,今天使用的光缆就相当于6亿多英里长的光纤。
1969年9月,博伊尔和史密斯博士在新泽西州莫雷山的贝尔实验室工作,在博伊尔博士办公室的黑板上,他们草拟了一个想法。史密斯博士在一次电话采访中回忆道,“他的办公室比我的大,我们两人经常在一起酝酿一些想法。”他们的想法运用了光电效应,光电效应是爱因斯坦阐述的,他还因此于1921年荣获了诺贝尔奖。当光照到硅片时,硅表面逸出电子。光越亮,逸出的电子就越多。
在一个电子耦合器件中,逸出的电子集合到一个小穴中。小穴中的电子本质上算是图片的像素。然后,一组电子耦合器件中的数据可以被重构为一个图片。除了应用于普通的数码相机,CCD也可以帮助哈勃太空望远镜拍下宇宙全景照片,或者帮助美国国家航空航天局的宇航员拍下火星照片。
该奖项1000万瑞典克朗(合81.8万英镑)的奖金有一半奖给高琨,史密斯和博伊尔各得四分之一。诺贝尔大会在斯德哥尔摩卡罗林斯卡学院宣布这一奖项时赞扬高琨“在光学通讯的光纤传输领域中取得了突破性成就”。史密斯和博伊尔则因“发明了成像半导体电路——电荷耦合器件图像传感器”而获此殊荣。
博伊尔通过电话向卡罗林斯卡学院的记者招待会表示:“我整个人都沉浸在快乐之中。”诺贝尔大会表示,这些研究“帮助奠定了今天网络化社会的基础。他们创造了许多日常生活中实用的创新发明,并为科学探索提供了新的工具”。
光纤为我们的信息社会构建了通讯传输系统。玻璃纤维使包括互联网在内的全球宽带通信成为可能。通过微细玻璃纤维传输的光波几乎可以承载所有的电话和数据流量。文字、音乐、图像和视频可以在瞬间传遍世界各地。
电荷耦合器件图像传感器是数码照相机的电子眼。它用电子捕获光线成像,替代了以往的胶片成像,从而彻底革新了摄影技术。该技术应用于许多医疗实例中,比如在疾病诊断及显微外科中提供人体体内成像。
A Chinese-born Briton who graduated from Woolwich Polytechnic in east London and became director of research at a mobile phone company in Essex has won this year’s Nobel prize for physics. Charles Kuen Kao won half of the famous prize for research that allowed information to be sent in beams of light along glass fibres over distances of 100km and more. The research revolutionised modern communications.
Kao shares the prize with George Smith, an American, and Willard Boyle, a Canadian-American, at Bell Labs in New Jersey, who developed the charged-coupled device (CCD), more familiarly known as the miniature digital cameras now ubiquitous in devices as wide-ranging as mobile phones and spacecraft.
Fiber optic cables and lasers capable of sending pulses of light down them already existed when Dr. Kao started working on fiber optics. But at that time, the light pulses could travel only about 20 meters through the glass fibers before 99 percent of the light had dissipated. His goal was to extend the 20 meters to a kilometer. At the time, many researchers thought tiny imperfections, like holes or cracks in the fibers, were scattering the light.
In January 1966, Dr. Kao, then working at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in England, presented his findings. It was not the manufacturing of the fiber that was at fault, but rather that the ingredient for the fiber—the glass—was not pure enough. A purer glass made of fused quartz would be more transparent, allowing the light to pass more easily. In 1970, researchers at Corning Glass Works were able to produce an ultrapure optical fiber more than a half-mile long.
A news release from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where Dr. Kao worked as a professor and later a vice chancellor, quoted Dr. Kao’s reaction: “This is very, very unexpected. Fiber optics has changed the world of information so much in these last 40 years. It certainly is due to the fiber optical networks that the news has traveled so fast.” According to the academy in its prize announcement, without Dr. Gao’s invention, the optical cables in use today, would equal a fiber more than 600 million miles long. In September 1969, Dr. Boyle and Dr. Smith, working at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., sketched out an idea on a blackboard in Dr. Boyle’s office. “He had a bigger office than me,” Dr. Smith recalled in a telephone interview. “The two of us frequently got together just to kick ideas around.” Their idea takes advantage of the photoelectric effect, which was explained by Albert Einstein and won him the Nobel in 1921. When light hits a piece of silicon, it knocks out electrons. The brighter the light, the more electrons are knocked out.
In a CCD, the knocked-out electrons are gathered in small wells, where they are counted—essentially one pixel of an image. The data from an array of CCDs can then be reconstructed as an image. Besides consumer cameras, CCDs also made possible the cosmic panoramas from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Martian postcards taken by NASA landers.
The 10m Swedish kronor (￡818,000) prize money has been divided to give half to Kao, with Smith and Boyle taking a quarter each. Announcing the award at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the Nobel assembly credited Kao for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication”. Smith and Boyle were honoured “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the CCD sensor”.
Speaking by phone to a press conference at the Karolinska Institute, Boyle said: “I have a lovely feeling all over my body.” The Nobel assembly said the research “helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies. They have created many practical innovations for everyday life and provided new tools for scientific exploration”.
Optical fibres make up the circulatory system of our communication-based society. The glass fibres allow for global broadband communications including the internet. Light flowing in thin threads of glass carries almost all of the telephony and data traffic. Text, music, images and video can be transferred around the globe in a split second.
The CCD is the digital camera’s electronic eye. It revolutionised photography, allowing light to be captured electronically instead of on film. The technology is used in many medical applications, such as imaging inside the human body for both diagnostics and microsurgery.
一位华裔英籍科学家荣获了今年的诺贝尔物理学奖,他毕业于伦敦东部的沃尔维奇理工学院,曾担任埃塞克斯某移动电话公司的研究部主任。此人就是查尔斯·高琨,他通过研究,让信息可以在光束中沿玻璃纤维传输达100公里以上,并由此赢得了2009年诺贝尔物理学奖一半的奖金。该项研究彻底改变了现代通信。
和高琨一起分享这一奖项的还有美国人乔治·史密斯和加拿大裔美国人威拉德·博伊尔,他们都在新泽西州贝尔实验室工作,他们还开发了电荷耦合器件(CCD),这种器件更为熟知的应用是目前广泛用于移动电话和航天器等设备中的微型数码相机。
当高锟开始研究光纤学时,光缆和能在光缆中发射光脉冲的激光已经存在。但那时,光脉冲在玻璃光纤中传输约20米后,99%的光能就已经损耗掉了。高锟的目标是把这个距离从20米延长到1千米。当时,许多研究者认为,是光纤中的小瑕疵,如漏洞和裂缝有一些小阻碍,导致了光的散射。
1966年1月,高博士在英国电讯标准实验室工作时提出了他的研究成果。他认为,问题不在光纤制造技艺上,而是光纤的成分——玻璃纯度不够。用熔凝石英制造的更为精纯的玻璃将会更加通透,光在其中穿行也就更为容易。1970年,康宁玻璃厂的研究者生产出了半英里多的超纯光纤。
高博士曾在香港中文大学担任教授后来成为副校长,校方发布的一则新闻引述了高博士对光纤的评价:“这非常出乎意料。在过去的40年里光纤重塑了信息世界。毫无疑问,正是由于光纤网络的铺设,新闻才能传播得如此迅捷。”瑞典皇家科学院在颁奖典礼上说,如果没有高锟的发明,今天使用的光缆就相当于6亿多英里长的光纤。
1969年9月,博伊尔和史密斯博士在新泽西州莫雷山的贝尔实验室工作,在博伊尔博士办公室的黑板上,他们草拟了一个想法。史密斯博士在一次电话采访中回忆道,“他的办公室比我的大,我们两人经常在一起酝酿一些想法。”他们的想法运用了光电效应,光电效应是爱因斯坦阐述的,他还因此于1921年荣获了诺贝尔奖。当光照到硅片时,硅表面逸出电子。光越亮,逸出的电子就越多。
在一个电子耦合器件中,逸出的电子集合到一个小穴中。小穴中的电子本质上算是图片的像素。然后,一组电子耦合器件中的数据可以被重构为一个图片。除了应用于普通的数码相机,CCD也可以帮助哈勃太空望远镜拍下宇宙全景照片,或者帮助美国国家航空航天局的宇航员拍下火星照片。
该奖项1000万瑞典克朗(合81.8万英镑)的奖金有一半奖给高琨,史密斯和博伊尔各得四分之一。诺贝尔大会在斯德哥尔摩卡罗林斯卡学院宣布这一奖项时赞扬高琨“在光学通讯的光纤传输领域中取得了突破性成就”。史密斯和博伊尔则因“发明了成像半导体电路——电荷耦合器件图像传感器”而获此殊荣。
博伊尔通过电话向卡罗林斯卡学院的记者招待会表示:“我整个人都沉浸在快乐之中。”诺贝尔大会表示,这些研究“帮助奠定了今天网络化社会的基础。他们创造了许多日常生活中实用的创新发明,并为科学探索提供了新的工具”。
光纤为我们的信息社会构建了通讯传输系统。玻璃纤维使包括互联网在内的全球宽带通信成为可能。通过微细玻璃纤维传输的光波几乎可以承载所有的电话和数据流量。文字、音乐、图像和视频可以在瞬间传遍世界各地。
电荷耦合器件图像传感器是数码照相机的电子眼。它用电子捕获光线成像,替代了以往的胶片成像,从而彻底革新了摄影技术。该技术应用于许多医疗实例中,比如在疾病诊断及显微外科中提供人体体内成像。