By Dominic Siriani
One of the great things about CLEO is that not only is it a way to keep up with cutting edge research, but it also allows us to reflect on how we got to this point and who brought us here. The latter was the topic of two symposia held at the conference on Sunday and Monday evenings.
Dr. Howard Schlossberg
On Sunday evening, the first night of CLEO 2014, the conference held a special session, the “Howard Schlossberg Retirement Special Symposium.” Dr. Schlossberg has been the program officer for optical sciences at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) for several decades. During his influential time in this position, he has fostered the development of X-ray generation, ultrafast optoelectronics, and optics in biomedicine. The symposium consisted of a number of insightful talks honoring Dr. Schlossberg and how his mentorship has led to many breakthroughs in light in medicine, ultrafast optics, and X-ray technology. It was a beautiful tribute to an insightful man with a very influential and impactful career.
Dr. James Gordon with the second maser.
Monday evening saw another special session, the “Special Symposium in Memory of James P. Gordon.” Dr. Gordon, as many probably already know, began his illustrious career working for Dr. Charles Townes and was a pioneer of the maser. The maser was instrumental in the discovery of cosmic background radiation, as was described by Arno Penzias. In addition, in collaboration with Fox, Li, and symposium speaker Gary Boyd, Dr. Gordon contributed to the development of confocal resonators, critical for low-loss laser cavities. However, his impact went far beyond the maser during an eminent career at Bell Laboratories, so much so that it would take very long to list all his achievements in this article. Highlighted during the symposium were his influence on quantum communications (presented by Mark Shtaif), laser trapping (Arthur Ashkin) and cooling (Steven Chu), and solitons (Linn Mollenauer). However, Dr. Gordon’s influence spanned more than just science, and this was highlighted wonderfully by all speakers, particularly by his wife and his daughter who gave beautiful tributes to his remarkable life as a platform tennis champion, mentor, husband, and father.
It was an excellent and inspiring start to CLEO 2014, and the messages in these symposia serve as great reminders of how we got to where we are now. It also was a great motivator for how far we can go from here. To paraphrase a quote Dr. James Gordon hung on his wall, “There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.” There’s so much left to be done and learned, and this is a great message for what CLEO and scientific research is all about.
Disclaimer: Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Government and MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Posted: 10 June 2014 by
Dominic Siriani
| with 0 comments