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Physicists win Nobel for high-tech wonders

Three scientists who created the technology behind digital photography and helped link the world through fiber-optic networks shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday.
Image: Willard Boyle and George Smith
In a 1970 photo, Willard Boyle and George Smith, creators of the technology behind digital photography, demonstrate the use of a charge-coupled device, or CCD.Bell Labs
/ Source: msnbc.com staff and news service reports

Three Americans whose 1960s research laid the foundation for today’s world of computerized images and lightning-fast communication shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday for their work developing fiber-optic cable and the sensor at the heart of digital cameras.

Charles K. Kao, 75, was cited for discovering how to transmit light signals over long distances through glass fibers as thin as a human hair. His 1966 breakthrough led to the creation of modern fiber-optic communication networks that carry voice, video and high-speed Internet data around the world.

“What the wheel did for transport, the optical fiber did for telecommunications,” said Richard Epworth, who worked with Kao at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in Harlow, England in the 1960s. “Optical fiber enables you to transmit information with little energy over long distances and to transmit information at very high rates.”

Kao solved the problem of transmitting through miles of glass without having the glass itself absorb the signal. Corning Glass Works built on his ideas to create the first fibers that could be used for large-scale long-distance communications, making today’s Internet possible.

Kao said he never expected the award despite the vast changes that resulted from his research. News of the award left him "speechless," he said.

Image: Charles Kao
Charles Kao, former head of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, smiles during an interview in Hong Kong in this March 17, 2004 file photo. A pioneer in fibre-optics and two scientists who figured out how to turn light into electronic signals -- work that paved the way for the Internet age -- were awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for physics October 6, 2009. Kao, a Shanghai-born British-American, won half the prize for research that led to a breakthrough in fiber-optics, determining how to transmit light over long distances via optical glass fibres. REUTERS/Stringer (CHINA SCI TECH) HONG KONG OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN HONG KONGX80011

"Fiber-optics has changed the world of information so much in these last 40 years," he said in a statement released by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was formerly vice chancellor.

Willard S. Boyle, 85, and George E. Smith, 79, were honored for inventing the eye of the digital camera, a sensor able to transform light into a large number of pixels, the tiny points of color that are the building blocks of every digital image.

Their charge-coupled device, or CCD, is found today in devices ranging from the cheapest point-and-shoot digital camera to robotic medical instruments equipped with video cameras that let surgeons perform delicate operations deep inside the human body. It also revolutionized astronomy by letting spacecraft equipped with digital cameras — including the Hubble Space Telescope — take images from previously unseen regions of outer space and transmit them back to Earth.

The work of the three men is “something that has really changed our lives,” said Joseph Nordgren, chair of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ physics committee. “The impact on science is enormous.”

The academy, which selects the recipients of the Nobel Prizes for physics and chemistry, said all three physics laureates have American citizenship. Boyle is also Canadian. Kao was born in Shanghai and is also a British citizen.

Phil Schewe, a physicist and spokesman for the American Institute of Physics called optical fibers “the backbone of our telecommunications world.” And the institute's director, H. Frederick Dylla, said fiber optics and CCD cameras ranked alongside the laser and the transistor as the top innovations of the past few decades.

"Taken together, these inventions may have had a greater impact on humanity than any others in the last half century," Dylla said in a statement.

From cell-phone cameras to Mars
Boyle and Smith’s 1969 discovery at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., “revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film,” the Swedish academy said. It described the technology as having built on Albert Einstein’s discovery of the photoelectric effect, for which he was awarded the Nobel physics prize in 1921.

Boyle told The Associated Press that the CCD did for light what the transistor did for sound.

“In other words, the CCD made it possible to store an optical image and transmit it and use it somewhere else.”

But he said the biggest achievement resulting from his work was the transmission of images showing features of Mars — for example, its red desert as seen by digital cameras in orbit and on the surface.

Smith and his wife, Janet Murphy, were asleep in their Waretown, N.J., home when the phone rang at 5:43 a.m. ET. He couldn’t get out of bed to answer it in time, and the call went to voicemail.

“It was a message in a Swedish accent, so we knew something was up,” Janet Murphy said.
Smith rushed to the Web site of the Nobel committee and saw that the announcement was to be made momentarily. The phone rang again shortly with the good news.

“It does do wonders for one’s ego,” Smith said. “People obviously like taking pictures. Look at all the cell-phone cameras and cameras in your computer. That’s using this technology.”

Often-overlooked marvels
Borje Johansson, a member of the Nobel Committee for Physics, said the three men’s work was evident in numerous, and often overlooked, ways.

“When you Google — if you Google — you can be somewhere in the U.S. finding information and you don’t notice” that the results are being scoured from worldwide sources. “You think you have it right in your pockets.”

He said the work on the CCD had opened up events worldwide to an immediate audience, too, because of the proliferation of digital cameras.

“I think it’s very important for people in general that whatever happens in a corner of the world the rest of the world can get this information because of these cameras everybody has,” he said, but noted there was a downside because “you have all this pornography and everything.”

Boyle acknowledged that some people might think the innovations he helped pioneer have become too pervasive. "We are the ones who started this profusion of little, small cameras working all over the world," he said.

Trio will split $1.4 million
The award’s 10 million-kronor ($1.4 million) purse will be split between the three, with Kao taking half and Boyle and Smith each getting a quarter.

Smith, an avid sailor who recently completed a long-term cruise around the world, didn't immediately say what he would do with the money. "I'm 79 years old right now, and I don't think my life is going to change much," he said. "I don't even need a bigger boat."

On Monday, three American scientists shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, an insight that has inspired new lines of research into cancer.

Elizabeth H. Blackburn, who also has Australian citizenship, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak were cited for their work in solving the mystery of how chromosomes, the rod-like structures that carry DNA, protect themselves from degrading when cells divide.

The Nobel Prize for chemistry is due to be announced on Wednesday, followed by the literature Nobel on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday. The economics prize is to be announced next Monday.

The prizes will be awarded on Dec. 10 at ceremonies held in Stockholm (for most of the awards) and in Oslo, Norway (for the Peace Prize).

This report includes information from The Associated Press, Reuters and msnbc.com.

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