Oral history interview with Isaac D. Abella, 1985 October 22.

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Oral history interview with Isaac D. Abella, 1985 October 22.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/83157998

Ph.D. thesis under Charles H. Townes, with research (in collaboration with Herman Cummins) directed towards achieving an operating laser. How Abella became Townes' thesis student and joined Cummins in 1959 in research on the potassium laser. Difficulties of work with the potassium laser; Townes' abiding interest in the project even while he was on leave at the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA); pumping sources for the potassium laser; work on the cesium laser; Oliver Heavens' role in their laser project; his and Cummins' reaction after learning that Maiman successfully operated the world's first laser; Townes' directive that Abella switch from cesium to ruby maser work; and aspects of his thesis work on 2-photon absorption and his experiment with Sven Hartmann on photon echoes.

1 session, no tape or transcript.Notes: 10 p.

American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library

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SNAC Resource ID: 8296578

Related Entities

There are 3 Entities related to this resource.

Abella, Isaac D., 1934-

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w61z529j (person)

Bromberg, Joan Lisa

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6t72jj7 (person)

Historian (science). On history of science faculty at the University of Hawaii, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, and the Hebrew University; assistant to Léon Rosenfeld at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen (1969-1971); contract historian at the U. S. Department of Energy (1977-1981); and director of the Laser History Project co-sponsored by the American Institute of Physics, Center for History of Physics, from 1982. Wrote "The Laser in America, 1950-1970" in 1991 (MIT Press). Latest work ...

Townes, Charles Hard

http://n2t.net/ark:/99166/w6b56kv5 (person)

Physicist. Member of technical staff, Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1939-1947; professor of physics, Columbia University, 1948-1961; physics dept. chairman, director of radiation laboratory, and provost, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1961-1967; University Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, from 1967. From the description of Memoranda from Bell Telephone Laboratories concerning applications of microwave spectroscopy (1946); letters from Townes to Joan Br...