The Templeton Prize – Charles H. Townes (2005)

Charles H. Townes (2005)

Charles H. Townes is Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 with Aleksander Prokhorov and Nikolai Basov for his investigations into the properties of microwaves, which led to his invention of the maser, and his co-invention of the laser, which amplifies and directs light waves into parallel direct beams.

Townes has spent decades as a leading advocate for the convergence of science and religion. His 1966 article, "The Convergence of Science and Religion," in IBM's Think magazine, established Townes as a unique voice, especially among scientists, that sought commonality between the two disciplines. He often cites his discovery of the principles of the maser - an insight that suddenly occurred to him as he sat on a park bench in Washington, D.C. in 1951 - as a "revelation" as real as any revelation described in the scriptures, and as a striking example of the interplay of "how" and "why" that both science and religion must recognize.

Townes received a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1939 and worked on the technical staff of the Bell Telephone Laboratories during World War II. After serving as a professor of physics at Columbia University and as vice president and director of research at the Institute for Defense Analysis in Washington, he became provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961. He was appointed University Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967.

Most recently, Townes has been a champion of optical searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, using methods he first proposed in 1961 as a complement to searches for radio transmissions from distant solar systems. His current work uses lasers to help combine images from distant telescopes. His book, How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist, was published by Oxford University Press in 1999.