William R. Bennett, Jr.

William Ralph Bennett, Jr. ( born January 30, 1930 in Jersey City, † June 29, 2008 in Haverford, Pennsylvania) was an American physicist. Bennett was 1960, a co-inventor of the first gas laser, a helium-neon laser. At Bell Laboratories

Life and work

Bennett studied at Princeton University and received his doctorate at Columbia University. From 1962 to 2000 he was a professor at Yale University, where he retired in 1998. From 1972, he was there " Charles Baldwin Sawyer Professor for applied science and physics". In addition to the Miterfindung of the helium - neon laser in 1960 (along with Ali Javan and Donald Herriott ), he also developed several other lasers such as the argon -ion laser and discovered the spectral hole burning ( " hole burning effect" ) in gas lasers, which he for used frequency stabilization of lasers.

With his daughter, the medical professor Jean Bennett Maguire, he developed the "real time spectral phonocardiography " method in cardiology. He also examined the effects of electromagnetic radiation on humans. He examined the physics of musical instruments and played clarinet in several amateur symphony orchestras.

Bennett wrote eight books and over 120 scientific articles. He held twelve patents. In 1963 he was Sloan Fellow and Guggenheim Fellow in 1967. In 1965 he was awarded for the invention of the gas laser with the IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award; In 1974 he became a Fellow of the IEEE (1997 Life Fellow ).

Books (selection)

• Introduction to Computer Applications for Non- Science Students. Prentice- Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1976
• Scientific and Engineering Problem Solving with the Computer. Prentice- Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1976
• The Physics of gas laser. Gordon and Breach, London 1976
• Atomic Gas Laser Transition Data. Plenum Publishing Company, New York 1979
• Health and Low Frequency Electromagnetic Fields. Yale University Press, New Haven 1994