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The OSA Centennial PIONEERS Pioneers (Facing page) ... The OSA Centennial Credit .... VOLUME 1: CAPTURING THE LEGACY www.osa.org/100 This booklet is the first of a series of four highlighting the past, present and future of The Optical Society (OSA) on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. Subsequent booklets will focus on where the society is today, and on its future. In this first entry, however, we take a backward glance, and attempt to capture some of OSA’s legacy through a small (and, alas, space-limited) sample of images and stories from the society’s first century. It’s a glimpse at how OSA and the science of optics and photonics have grown up together, and at a few of the people who have made that history. Like all professional organizations, OSA has in part been a reflection of its times, and of the broader social forces that have shaped them. As a result, much of the history recounted in the following pages reflects OSA’s origins in the early-20th-century, northeastern United States. Yet, especially after the laser burst on the scene in 1960, OSA’s story has also been one of steadily increasing diversity, as the society builds on a long-standing commitment to fully reflect the ever-greater global reach and inclusiveness of optical science. OSA arose at a time of immense uncertainty, with Europe embroiled in 1916’s “Great War.” Yet OSA’s birth also reflected a spirit of optimism, flowing from the preceding half-century’s amazing progress in optical science. And that optimistic spirit has been borne out repeatedly in the succeeding 100 years. Future OSA Fellow William Silfvast with an early He-Cd laser at Bell Labs in 1969. Reprinted with permission of Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc. 1 2 OSA Presidents OSA’s century of success reflects the vision of 81 remarkable, committed leaders, from founder Perley Nutting to 2016 President Alan Willner (right). Perley G. Nutting, 1916-1917 Stanley S. Ballard, 1963 Richard L. Abrams, 1990 Fred E. Wright, 1918-1919 Richard C. Lord, 1964 John N. Howard, 1991 Floyd K. Richtmyer, 1920 Seibert Q. Duntley, 1965 Joseph W. Goodman, 1992 James P.C. Southall, 1921 Van Zandt Williams, 1966 Elsa M. Garmire, 1993 Leonard T. Troland, 1922-1923 John A. Sanderson, 1967 Robert L. Byer, 1994 Herbert E. Ives, 1924-1925 Arthur F. Turner, 1968 Tingye Li, 1995 William E. Forsythe, 1926-1927 Karl G. Kessler, 1969 Duncan T. Moore, 1996 Irwin G. Priest, 1928-1929 W. Lewis Hyde, 1970 Janet S. Fender, 1997 Loyd A. Jones, 1930-1931 Bruce H. Billings, 1971 Gary C. Bjorklund, 1998 Eugene C. Crittenden, 1932 Aden B. Meinel, 1972 Anthony E. Siegman, 1999 Wilbur B. Rayton, 1933-1934 Robert E. Hopkins, 1973 Erich P. Ippen, 2000 Arthur C. Hardy, 1935-1936 F. Dow Smith, 1974 Richard C. Powell, 2001 Roswell Clifton Gibbs, 1937-1938 Arthur L. Schawlow, 1975 Anthony M. Johnson, 2002 Kasson S. Gibson, 1939-1940 Boris P. Stoicheff, 1976 G. Michael Morris, 2003 Archie G. Worthing, 1941-1942 Peter Franken, 1977 Peter L. Knight, 2004 August H. Pfund, 1943-1944 Emil Wolf, 1978 Susan Houde-Walter, 2005 George R. Harrison, 1945-1946 Dudley Williams, 1979 Eric Van Stryland, 2006 Rudolf Kingslake, 1947-1948 Warren J. Smith, 1980 Joseph H. Eberly, 2007 William F. Meggers, 1949-1950 Anthony J. DeMaria, 1981 Rod C. Alferness, 2008 Brian O'Brien, 1951-1952 Robert P. Madden, 1982 Thomas M. Baer, 2009 Deane B. Judd, 1953-1954 Kenneth M. Baird, 1983 James C. Wyant, 2010 Ralph A. Sawyer, 1955-1957 Donald R. Herriott, 1984 Christopher Dainty, 2011 Irvine C. Gardner, 1958 Robert R. Shannon, 1985 Tony F. Heinz, 2012 John D. Strong, 1959 Jean M. Bennett, 1986 Donna Strickland, 2013 James G. Baker, 1960 Robert G. Greenler, 1987 Philip H. Bucksbaum, 2014 Wallace R. Brode, 1961 William B. Bridges, 1988 Philip Russell, 2015 David L. MacAdam, 1962 Herwig Kogelnik, 1989 Alan Willner, 2016 OSA Historical Archives OSA 3 4 Pioneers Like all far-seeing scientists and engineers, OSA’s founders stood on the shoulders of giants. Giants like James Clerk Maxwell, whose famous equations, published 50 years before the society was born, established the nature of light as an electromagnetic wave. Giants like Albert A. Michelson and Edward Morley, who followed up Maxwell’s insights with their landmark experiment that forever put to rest the notion that space had to be filled with an “ether” through which light waves passed, and that kick-started the “second scientific revolution” that gained momentum in the 20th century. Giants like Albert Einstein, whose insights on the photoelectric effect and discovery of stimulated emission suggested an alternative view of light’s fundamental character—that it was packaged into the discrete quanta of energy that later came to be called “photons.” Even as these scientists, and countless others, were probing light’s ultimate nature, the late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw groundbreaking engineering that would ultimately find practical use decades in the future. Numerous workers demonstrated “light pipes,” glass rods and other carriers of illumination that would today be recognized as waveguides, and the dim precursors of modern fiber optics. Photography, born earlier in the century, continued to explode, and reached its first mass market with George Eastman’s Albert Einstein, flanked by OSA Honorary Members A.A. Michelson (left) and Robert Millikan (right), at a 1931 meeting. William Kellogg/Courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives 5 6 PIONEERS Kodak camera, which debuted in 1888. And the looming conflict in Europe underscored the worldwide need for optical skill and innovation. In short, the time was ripe for a new scientific home for optical engineering and technology. A New Society Is Born The Optical Society of America (OSA) sprang initially from just such practical roots. The society’s first meeting, on 28 December 1916 in New York City, at Columbia University’s Fayerweather Hall, marked the culmination of a six- year effort by Perley G. Nutting. In 1910, as a scientist at the U.S. Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., Nutting had begun a letter-writing campaign to like-minded scientists in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom arguing for the creation of an organized, journal-publishing optical society in North America. Not surprisingly in an era characterized by the rise of industrial labs and the gathering clouds of war in Europe, Nutting’s interests were firmly on the applied side of the science. In 1912, even as he moved to Rochester, New York, to take up a new position at Eastman Kodak, he published the early, 234-page textbook Outlines of Applied Optics, and several years later presented the influential paper “Needs of applied optics” at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Clockwise from top left: OSA founder Perley G. Nutting; the first issue of JOSA, dated January 1917; Frederic Ives, the namesake of OSA’s first named award, issued in 1928; OSA’s seal of incorporation, 1932. OSA seal, Nutting, JOSA cover: OSA Historical Archives / Ives: Wikimedia Commons 7 8 PIONEERS By 1915, Nutting and a number of other early optics luminaries in the Rochester area had founded the Rochester Association for the Advancement of Applied Optics. And, by the middle of the following year, that organization had become national in scope and ambitions—with a new name, the Optical Society of America, and member dues of US$5 per year. Growing Up with U.S. Industry Between its founding and the laser revolution that began in the mid-1950s, OSA’s story largely played out alongside the rise of U.S. industry, across a historical landscape that featured two wrenching global wars, a worldwide economic depression, and the surge in American prosperity in the wake of World War II. Scientists closely tied to OSA made key contributions to optical technology for the U.S. effort in both world wars. And, during peacetime, the nascent U.S. optics industry became increasingly professionalized and diverse. One ambition of Nutting’s in founding the society was an optics journal to rival the German Archiv für Optik. In 1917, the year after the society’s founding, that ambition was realized with the first issue of the Journal of the Optical Society of America (JOSA). Another early publishing landmark of the society was a three-volume translation of von Helmholz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics, issued from 1921 to 1924—and lauded in a Science review as an accomplishment “which has been dreamed of for years by English-speaking Future OSA President George Harrison, pictured here in 1935 in the MIT Spectroscopy Laboratory, played a key role in optics tied to the U.S. World War II effort. Courtesy MIT Museum Courtesy MIT 9 10 PIONEERS scholars, but regarded by them as a practical impossibility.” The 1920s also saw the establishment of the first (and still the most prestigious) of OSA’s rich series of professional awards, the Frederic Ives Medal, for distinguished work in optics. The Ives medal would ultimately be joined by 22 other awards, medals and citations regularly presented by the society. Against a backdrop that included continual advancement in optical manufacturing, equipment, photography, spectroscopy and other areas; increasing sophistication in understanding the quantum nature of light and light-matter interactions (reflected in Nobel Prizes for Einstein, Millikan, Compton, Raman and others); and the first theoretical description of holography—OSA continued to grow. Outside of a small decline during the Great Depression, the society’s membership expanded steadily, from 200 in 1920 to more than 2,300 by the mid-1950s, as the United States emerged as a world competitor in optical manufacturing and technology.
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