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Charles Kuen Kao, KBE (Xangai, 4 de novembro de 1933 – Hong Kong, 23 de setembro de 2018 [1]) foi um físico anglo-americano nascido na China. [2] Foi um dos pioneiros na óptica de fibras de vidro, trabalho pelo qual recebeu o Nobel de Física de 2009.
Sir Charles Kao Kuen (Chinese: Gao Kun; simplified Chinese: 高锟; traditional Chinese: 高鉲; pinyin: Gāo kūn) GBM KBE FRS FREng (November 4, 1933 – September 23, 2018) was a Chinese physicist and Nobel laureate who contributed to the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications.
Learn about the life and achievements of Charles Kao, who shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on optical fiber communications. Discover his family background, education, career, and contributions to the field of optoelectronics.
23 de set. de 2018 · Charles Kuen Kao. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2009. Born: 4 November 1933, Shanghai, China. Died: 23 September 2018, Hong Kong, N/A. Affiliation at the time of the award: Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Harlow, United Kingdom; Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
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Today, fibre-optic cables carry more than 95% of all digital data around the world, underpinning the Internet. In 1966, it was Kuen Charles Kao (Charlie to his colleagues) who proposed the use of optical fibres as a universal medium for communication, and calculated how it might be done. Given the rudimentary technology available at the time, it was a leap of imagination, bordering on science fiction. For this work, Kao won a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.
Kao was born on 4 November 1933 into Shanghai high society, to an academic lawyer father and poet mother. Introverted and geeky, Kao was educated at home with his younger brother Timothy before going to French- and English-speaking schools. In 1953, he moved to England to study at Woolwich Polytechnic (now the University of Greenwich in London).
Graduating in electrical engineering in 1957, he joined Standard Telephones and Cables, part of the conglomerate International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT). There he met his wife, fellow engineer Gwen Mae-wan Wong. He turned down a lectureship at Loughborough Polytechnic, UK, to do an industrial PhD in the company’s research arm — the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) in Harlow, UK. Similar to Bell Labs in the United States (although less well funded), STL was a nursery for future academic and industrial leaders, heady with creativity, camaraderie and resourcefulness. Kao joined the group of Toni Karbowiak, working alongside another British telecommunications pioneer, Alec Reeves.
At the time, telecommunications used coaxial electronic cables or broadcast radio signals in the megahertz frequency range. Growing demand for information transfer meant moving to higher, microwave frequencies (gigahertz), with major research programmes set up around the world to find a way to guide signals from source to destination. The front-runner technology was hollow metal waveguides, pioneered in the 1950s by Harold Barlow, Kao’s external PhD supervisor at University College London. Costly and impractical, these metal tubes needed to be laid in straight lines. Karbowiak, a seasoned microwave engineer and former PhD student of Barlow, knew that new ideas were needed.
In the early 1960s, just as the laser came about, Karbowiak asked Kao to look at an optical analogue of a microwave waveguide. Optical signals have an even higher frequency (hundreds of terahertz), and so can carry more information. The idea of making a waveguide for the transmission of light over hundreds of kilometres was breathtaking. It meant shrinking the waveguide from a few centimetres across to something as thin as a human hair, just 100 or so micrometres wide. Glass was the most optically transparent material known, and had the advantages of being potentially flexible and resistant to lightning. But could it be made pure and clear enough? George Hockham, a talented young theorist, was assigned to help Kao.
•Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to light pioneers
•Nature Photonics: Daring to dream
A tribute to the engineer who proposed optical fibre communications that underpin the Internet. Learn about his life, achievements, challenges and legacy in this comprehensive article by Polina Bayvel.
- Polina Bayvel
- 2018
2 de mai. de 2024 · Charles Kao (born November 4, 1933, Shanghai, China—died September 23, 2018, Hong Kong) was a physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2009 for his discovery of how light can be transmitted through fibre-optic cables.
24 de set. de 2018 · HONG KONG — Charles Kuen Kao, a Nobel laureate in physics whose research in the 1960s revolutionized the field of fiber optics and helped lay the technical groundwork for the information age ...
