ABSTRACT

It was not until later that concentrated eorts toward using stimulated processes to obtain visible radiation were made. In the Soviet Union, this research was mainly performed at the Lebedev Institute under Basov and Prokhorov, while in the United States the main workers were Gordon Gould (1920-2005)—whose story will be told in Section 5.4-and Charles H Townes and Arthur L Schawlow. e latter were the rst to publish detailed and exhaustive proposals which subsequently led to the construction of various types of laser, and so, although the rst lasers to become operational were not of the kind which had been considered by them, we shall begin by describing their proposal.