LaserShow highlights far north QLD’s Nobel Prize hero
As part of National Science Week JCU is hosting the LaserShow highlighting the curious story of Aleksandr Prokhorov. Prokhorov, who was born on the Atherton Tablelands, went on to become a co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1964. The LaserShow commemorates the birth of Prokhorov in 1916.
The Laser Show is an exciting 45 minute interactive show with demonstrations and audience participation. There will be opportunities for Q&A at the end of the show. The Laser Show will be specially tailored to include the story of Prokhorov. It is one of series of public presentations that will highlight the curious story of Aleksandr Prokhorov who attended school on the Atherton Tablelands before returning with his parents to their Russian homeland.
Attendees will learn how the laser is found in an increasing number of applications.
When: Thursday, August 18 2016 at 5:30pm
Where: JCU Cairns, 14-88 McGregor Road, Smithfield, Cairns
Topic: Innovation and technology
Cost: Free
How many Australians know that one of the co-inventors of the laser was born in and attended school in regional Queensland?
The LaserShow is two person show, presented by Prof Hans Bachor (of ANU) and Patrick Helean (of Questacon – the National Science and Technology Centre, Canberra). The show will be tailored for the audience – it might include a visit from Albert Einstein (see photo).
Prior to the show early arrivals will have an opportunity to participate in “do-it-yourself” holograms.
The show is an initiative of the Australian Optical Society and the Australian Institute of Physics and funded from a National Science Week 2016 grant with involvement from staff from several different universities.
About Aleksandr Prokhorov
Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov was an outstanding Soviet physicist, one of the pioneers in research in lasers, masers and quantum electronics, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 with Nikolay Basov and Charles Townes, founder of a school of sciences, head of the laboratory of oscillations in the Lebedev Physical Institute, founder and head of the General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Dr. Sci. in Physics and Mathematics, full Professor, and Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Prokhorov was born in Australia to a family of Russian emigrants. In 1923 they returned to Russia, then the USSR. In 1939 Prokhorov graduated with honors from Leningrad State University and became a postgraduate student of the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow.
In 1964 Aleksandr Prokhorov, Nikolay Basov and Charles Hard Townes, USA, received the Nobel Prize in Physics “for fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which has led to the construction of oscillators and amplifiers based on the maser-laser principle”. By that time two Soviet physicists had already received Lenin Prize for their work in 1959.
Reference: Phototonics World of Lasers and Optics