Robert D. Maurer

Robert D. Maurer ( born July 20, 1924 in Arkadelphia, Arkansas) is an American physicist and fiber pioneer.

Mason studied at the University of Arkansas, first chemical engineer, then physics. This was interrupted by military service in World War II, where he was severely wounded by a landmine in Europe and the Purple Heart was awarded. In 1948, he received his bachelor's degree in physics at the University of Arkansas and 1951 he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology PhD ( measurement of the second sound in liquid helium ). From 1952 to 1989 he was at the Corning Glass Works, where he from 1960, the group headed Applied Physics and 1978 Research Fellow was.

To 1966, he heard of fiberglass pioneering work by Charles Kuen Kao in England and it was decided at Corning Glass to enter into their own development. Due to new manufacturing methods developed to suppress the loss below 20 decibels per kilometer, so the use in optical communication was possible succeeded. Also involved are Donald Keck and Peter C. Schultz.

In 1999 he was awarded the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the 2000 National Medal of Technology, the 1978 Industrial Physics Prize of the American Physical Society (APS ) and the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, the 1989 International Prize for New Materials of the APS and 1979 the Swedish Ericsson Price for telecommunications. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Institute of Physics and IEEE Fellow and received the 1987 John Tyndall Award. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1993. In 1980 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Arkansas.