The laser’s early years were full of scientific creativity, public-relations spin and intense rivalry. Pauline Rigby describes how a then little-known scientist became the first person to design and ...

Theodore Maiman, who built the first working laser, passed away on 5 May aged 79. Maiman made his breakthrough in 1960 by generating pulses of coherent light from a fingertip-sized lump of ruby ...

1960: Physicist Theodore Maiman uses a synthetic-ruby crystal to create the first laser. Maiman began tinkering with electronic devices in his teens and even earned college money repairing appliances ...

The Shanghai Laser Plasma Institute, a research arm of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, was initiated in 1984 and put into operation in 1986. It mainly engages in the research and development ...

Darwin Quiroz is exploring new frontiers in miniature lasers with major biomedical applications. When Quiroz first started working with optics as an undergraduate, he was developing atomic ...