Ali Javan

Ali Javan (26 December 1926 – 12 September 2016) was an Iranian-American physicist and inventor, born in Tehran and died in Los Angeles. ^{1 2} He was the first to propose the concept of the gas laser, in 1959 at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and with W. R. Bennett Jr. and D. R. Herriott built its first working model in 1960: the helium–neon laser, the first continuously operating laser. ¹ His other contributions were in quantum physics and spectroscopy, and he spent most of his career as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ^{1 3}

Javan was born in Tehran to Iranian Azerbaijani parents from Tabriz. ¹ His father was a lawyer and his mother had artistic inclinations; he began his university studies at the University of Tehran in 1947–48 before moving to the United States in 1949. ⁴ He attended a school conducted by Zoroastrians, graduated from Alborz High School, and studied for one year at the School of Science of the University of Tehran. ¹ During a visit to New York in 1948 he attended several graduate courses at Columbia University, and he received his PhD in 1954 under his thesis advisor Charles Townes, without having received a bachelor's or master's degree. ¹ At Columbia he also took music classes with the composer Henry Cowell. ⁴

After his doctorate Javan held a postdoctoral position in Columbia's Radiation Laboratory and worked with Townes on atomic clock research, using the microwave atom beam spectrometer to study the hyperfine structure of atoms such as copper and thallium. ¹ In 1957 he published a paper on the theory of a three-level maser, and his discovery of the stimulated Raman effect showed that a Stokes-shifted Raman transition can produce amplification without requiring a population inversion — the precursor of the class of effects known as lasers without inversion. ¹

He joined Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1958, shortly after he conceived the working principle of his gas-discharge helium–neon laser, and submitted his paper for publication; it was reviewed by Samuel Goudsmit in 1960. ¹ He then moved to MIT: the English article says he began as an associate professor of physics in 1961 and has been professor since 1964, while Optica and the Engineering and Technology History Wiki say he joined the faculty in 1962; he remained Francis Wright Davis Professor Emeritus of physics until his death. ^{1 3 4}

Javan's gas laser was the first continuously operating laser, running on a very low input of about 25 watts in the first model, against the thousands of watts ruby lasers needed for short bursts, and its output power was about one milliwatt. ¹ It greatly surpassed the ruby laser in the narrowness of its output wavelengths: its infrared beam was slightly less than half an inch wide and spread no more than a foot over a mile. ¹ One day after its realization the laser was used to transmit a telephone call, and Javan later described the moment: he called the lab, a team member asked him to hold, and then he heard a voice, somewhat quivering in transmission, telling him it was the laser light speaking to him. ¹ The helium–neon laser's United States patent is No. 3,149,290. ²

In 1961 Javan carried out the first demonstration of optical heterodyne beats with lasers, and he observed the detuning dip called the Lamb dip while scanning a single-mode laser across its Doppler-broadened gain profile; he and his colleagues pioneered stabilizing laser frequencies with techniques using the Lamb dip. ¹ In 1964 he and Townes devised laser experiments to test special relativity, including a variant of the Michelson–Morley ether-drift experiment, and his group repeated the experiment with a sensitivity able to detect a change as small as 0.03 millimetre per second. ¹ At MIT he introduced the concept of an optical antenna, which enabled the near-complete confinement of an incident optical field at an infinitesimal receiving structure, and by this method he developed the first absolutely accurate measurement of the speed of light. ^{1 4} He continued into an area he called "optical electronics" — scaling electronic elements to handle frequencies as high as those of visible optical radiation. ¹

Javan received the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1962 "for conception and development of the first continuous optical laser which utilised Neon and Helium", the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America in 1975, the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 1993, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2006. ^{1 2} In 1966 he and Theodore Maiman split a cash award presented by President Johnson honouring their work, and in 1971 he directed the Symposium on Laser Physics held at the University of Isfahan. ¹ The Urdu article records nominations for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1962 and 1963, citing the Nobel Foundation, and in 2007 The Daily Telegraph ranked him twelfth on its list of the "Top 100 Living Geniuses". ^{5 1}

This section sets out disagreements and variant readings as the sources report them; it is not a verdict by the museum. The English article credits Javan as "the first to propose the concept of the gas laser", while Optica calls him co-inventor of the gas laser with William R. Bennett, and the article adds Herriott as a third builder of the prototype; the difference in how priority is phrased is recorded here as the sources give it. ^{1 3} The sources also differ in small details: the Marquis Who's Who entry carried by Prabook gives his birth date as 27 December 1926 rather than the 26 December used here, and his MIT start is given as 1961 or 1962 as noted above. ^{1 3} As to his religion, the Arabic article's infobox gives Shia Islam, and the English "List of Shia Muslims" includes him among scientists; both sit inside the same Wikipedia/Wikidata ecosystem, and no source outside it consulted for this record — Optica's obituary, the ETHW biography — names any religion or school, so the museum records no school in his data and reports the claim here only. ^{6 3 4}

Javan died on 12 September 2016, survived by his wife Marjorie and their two daughters, Lila and Maia. ¹ The museum records no further family detail.

The helium–neon laser he co-invented became, in the National Inventors Hall of Fame's words, the most useful and practical type of laser in use, and later generations of gas lasers fed into internet data transmission, bar-code scanners, laser printers and medical technologies. ^{2 3} Robert J. Scully and Marlan O. Scully wrote his biographical memoir for the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. ¹

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