Ali Javan

Ali Javan ( born December 26, 1926 in Tehran ) is an Iranian physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Along with William R. Bennett, and Donald Herriott Richard he developed in 1960 the helium -neon laser.

Life

Javan parents came from Tabriz. He graduated from Alborz High School and began his studies at the University of Tehran. In 1948 he went to the USA, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1954 at Columbia University in physics. Then he was there until he started post-doctoral researcher in September 1958 in the research group of the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. There he invented the principle of the gas laser. In 1961 he was an associate professor of physics at MIT, from 1964 as a professor.

In 1975 he was awarded by the Optical Society of America, the Frederic Ives Medal, the 1993 Albert Einstein World Award of Science.