James P. Gordon

James Power Gordon was an American physicist known for his work in the fields of optics and quantum electronics. His contributions include the design, analysis and construction of the first maser in 1954 as a doctoral student at Columbia University under the supervision of C. H. Townes, development of the quantal equivalent of Shannons information capacity formula in 1962, development of the theory for the diffusion of atoms in an optical trap in 1980, and the discovery of what is now known as the GordonHaus effect in soliton transmission, together with H. A. Haus in 1986. James P. Gordon was a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science .

J. P. Gordon was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 20, 1928, and was raised in Forest Hills, Queens and Scarsdale, New York. His father, Robert S. Gordon was a lawyer and worked as VP and General Counsel for National Dairy, now Kraftco. Gordon attended Scarsdale High School and Phillips Exeter Academy . In 1949 he received a bachelors degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and joined the physics department of Columbia University as a graduate student. He received his Masters and PhD degrees in physics in 1951 and 1955, respectively. In the framework of his doctoral research he designed, built and demonstrated the successful operation of the first maser together with H. Zeiger and with his doctoral advisor Prof. Charles H. Townes. The invention of the maser won the Nobel Prize in Physics, which C.H. Townes shared in 1964 with the Russian scientists N. Bassov and A. Prokhorov. Starting in 1955 and until his retirement in 1996, James P. Gordon worked as a scientist at A

Source: Wikipedia