HARVARD PHYSICIST SHARES NOBEL PRIZE

Author: By Robert Cooke Globe Staff

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 1981
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER

Bloembergen, 61, of Lexington, will share half of the award with Prof. Arthur Schawlow of Stanford University. The other half goes to Kai Siegbahn of Uppsala University in Sweden.

Also yesterday, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences announced that Prof.
Roald Hoffman of Cornell University and Prof. Kenichi Fukui of Kyoto University in Japan, had won the 1981 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

The two Nobel Prizes are worth $180,000 each, and will be split among the recipients.

Bloembergen, who came to Harvard to work with Prof. Edward Purcell in 1949, was given the award, the academy said, "for the development of laser spectroscopy."

This work, he said during a news conference, involves study of the interaction of light with matter.

"The part of the prize I share with Schawlow (at Stanford) is concerned with laser spectroscopy, which utilizes lasers to find out more about atoms and molecules in general. My own interest has been in the special properties that matter exhibits when light intensity becomes very high," Bloembergen said.

The award to Siegbahn - whose father, Karl Manne George Siegbahn, won the 1924 Nobel Prize in physics for work in X-ray spectroscopy - was for his work in electron spectroscopy, which involves analysis of electrons expelled from atomic systems.

The chemistry award to Fukui and Hoffman was for separate work on the application of mathematics to organic chemistry. Both used what is called quantum mechanics to predict and analyze organic reactions.

Schawlow, who along with Nobel laureate Charles Townes developed a device called the maser, the microwave-emitting forerunner of the laser, described spectroscopy as studying atoms by measuring how much light they emit and
absorb.

Lasers, which are useful because of their ability to produce a very narrow, concentrated beam of monochromatic (single color) light, have become one of the most versatile and widely used tools of modern science.

In addition, lasers are being used extensively in communications to send messages, in medicine for surgical procedures and for ultra-precise measurement of distances. Lasers also are being developed by the military for advanced weaponry.

Bloembergen, whose work has been supported primarily by the US Department of Defense, added that he has been working with lasers "for 20 years, ever since they came on the scene. Of course, Shawlow is one of the inventors of the laser."

His work in a field called magnetic resonance spectroscopy was important toward development of techniques for "pumping" energy into materials such as ruby and carbon dioxide. When such materials have been pumped, they can be induced to "lase," to emit that extra energy as a beam of coherent light.

"In 1956 I used this work in magnetic resonance" to develop "a pumping scheme" to activate certain materials, he explained, and "that was a critical step for development of lasers."

Only a few years later, in 1960 at the Hughes Aircraft Co. in California, Theodore Maiman built the first operating laser.

"I was very much interested in the proposal for lasers by Schawlow and (Charles) Townes. And when it was realized by Maiman, I was very interested in getting laser work started here in my laboratory," Bloembergen added.

During the 1960s, Bloembergen did important research work in the design and application of high-intensity lasers, which have become extremely useful in scientific laboratories of all kinds. His work with magnetic resonance spectroscopy also has been of seminal importance.

Dr. Paul Martin, dean of applied sciences at Harvard, noted that Bloembergen's work in magnetic resonance spectroscopy and lasers has led to development of tools used in most of the advanced chemistry laboratories in the world.

"They are two of the crucial ones for the modern chemist, the two tools most widely used" in chemical research work, Martin said.

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