Taiwan Today

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded one half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 to Charles Kuen Kao, an academician of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. Kao is the sixth person of Chinese ancestry to have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Born in Shanghai in 1933, Kao studied first in Hong Kong and then in England. He has both British and American citizenship. Known as the “father of fiber optics,” Kao won the award for his “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication.” In a press release statement, the Nobel Prize Committee explained more fully its reasons for giving this year’s prize to Kao. “In 1966, Kao made a discovery that led to a breakthrough in fiber optics. He carefully calculated how to transmit light over long distances via optical glass fibers. With a fiber of purest glass it would be possible to transmit light signals over 100 kilometers, compared to only 20 meters for the fibers available in the 1960s. “Kao’s enthusiasm inspired other researchers to share his vision of the future potential of fiber optics. The first ultrapure fiber was successful fabricated just four years later, in 1970.” Cell phones, modern international phone calls, cable television, and the Internet all exist today because of fiber optics. Through Kenneth Young, vice president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kao said that he was “deeply honored” to have received the prize. “The Nobel Prize in Physics is seldom given out to work done in applied physics, and so I never imagined I would win such an award. I am very, very surprised,” Kao said. It was thanks to fiber optics, Kao added, that news of his award was able to travel so quickly. The other half of this year’s physics award has been given to Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit—the Charge-Coupled Device, or CCD.” The Nobel Committee noted that “this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded for two scientific achievements that have helped to shape the foundations of today’s networked societies. They have created many practical innovations for everyday life and provided new tools for scientific exploration.” Lih J. Chen, deputy minister of the National Science Council, said that Kao “richly deserves the award.” Not only does the creation of fiber optics represent an important breakthrough in applied physics, it is what makes the entire field of telecommunications possible. “Without fiber optics, the telecommunications sector would not be thriving and burgeoning as it is now,” Chen said. Shih Ming-feng, a professor of physics at National Taiwan University, said that neither fiber optics nor CCD brought about an advancement in our knowledge of theoretical physics. The contributions of this year’s prize recipients lie rather in how they helped the scientific community to overcome technical difficulties. In the last 20 years, Shih added, very few fundamental breakthroughs in pure physics have been achieved. There has been nothing equivalent to quantum or high-energy physics. This may be the reason why the physics award has been given to more practical applications in recent years, he speculated. A prize award of 10 million Swedish krona (US$1.4 million) comes with the Nobel Prize in Physics. Kao will receive one half of the prize money, while the other half will be split between Boyle and Smith. (HZW)