How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist

Charles Townes is one of the leading figures in twentieth-century physics, inventor of the maser and the laser, and one of the pioneers in the use of spectroscopic techniques to determine the atomic composition of stars.
This book is the memoir of a life devoted to scientific research, and also to the application of this research in the public sphere. A Nobel laureate, Townes was also the first scientist to accept a full-time position advising the
Executive Branch, and later was a founde…