C. Kumar N. Patel

Last updated

C. Kumar N. Patel
C. Kumar N. Patel.jpg
Born (1938-07-02) 2 July 1938 (age 84)
Nationality Indian/American
Alma mater College of Engineering, Pune (B.E.)
Stanford University (M.S.)
Stanford University (PhD)
Awards Stuart Ballantine Medal (1968)
IEEE Medal of Honor (1989)
Scientific career
Fields Electrical engineering
Institutions University of California, Los Angeles

Chandra Kumar Naranbhai Patel (born 2 July 1938) is an electrical engineer. He developed the carbon dioxide laser in 1963; [1] it is now widely used in industry for cutting and engraving a wide range of materials like plastic and wood. Because the atmosphere is quite transparent to infrared light, CO2 lasers are also used for military rangefinding using LIDAR techniques.

Contents

Patel was born in Baramati, India, and received a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree from the Government College of Engineering, the University of Pune, India and the M.S. and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1959 and 1961, respectively. [2] Patel joined Bell Laboratories in 1961, and subsequently became Executive Director of the Research, Materials Science, Engineering and Academic Affairs Division at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he developed the carbon dioxide laser. Patel's discovery, in 1963, of the laser action on the rotational–vibrational transitions of carbon dioxide and his discovery, in 1964, of efficient vibrational energy transfer between molecules, led to a series of experiments which demonstrated that the carbon dioxide laser was capable of very high continuous-wave and pulsed power output at very high conversion efficiencies.

From 1993–1999, Patel served as vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also professor of physics and adjunct professor of electrical engineering. [3]

Patel discussing his career and his invention of the carbon dioxide laser.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton awarded Patel the National Medal of Science, "[f]or his fundamental contributions to quantum electronics and invention of the carbon dioxide laser, which have had significant impact on industrial, scientific, medical, and defense applications." [4] In addition to the carbon dioxide laser, he also developed the "spin-flip" infrared Raman laser. [5]

Patel currently holds 36 U.S. patents relating to lasers and laser applications. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, [6] the American Association for the Advancement of Science, [7] the American Physical Society, the IEEE, the Optical Society of America, [8] the Laser Institute of America, [9] the American Society of Laser Medicine and a Senior Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology. [10]

In 2018 C. Kumar N. Patel became an Honorary Member of the American Laser Study Club [11] which a year later named an award in his honor. [12]

Awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Kilby</span> American electrical engineer (1923–2005)

Jack St. Clair Kilby was an American electrical engineer who took part in the realization of the first integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments (TI) in 1958. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on December 10, 2000. Kilby was also the co-inventor of the handheld calculator and the thermal printer, for which he had the patents. He also had patents for seven other inventions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicolaas Bloembergen</span> Dutch-born American physicist

Nicolaas Bloembergen was a Dutch-American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized for his work in developing driving principles behind nonlinear optics for laser spectroscopy. During his career, he was a professor at Harvard University and later at the University of Arizona and at Leiden University in 1973.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Holonyak</span> American engineer (1928–2022)

Nick Holonyak Jr. was an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention and first demonstration of a semiconductor laser diode that emitted visible light. This device was the forerunner of the first generation of commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs). He was then working at a General Electric Company research laboratory near Syracuse, New York. He left General Electric in 1963 and returned to his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he later became John Bardeen Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eli Yablonovitch</span> American physicist

Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.

Paul Ching Wu Chu is a Chinese-American physicist specializing in superconductivity, magnetism, and dielectrics. He is a Professor of physics and T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science in the Physics Department at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. He was the President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from 2001 to 2009. In 1987, he was one of the first scientists to demonstrate high-temperature superconductivity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carbon-dioxide laser</span> Form of gas laser

The carbon-dioxide laser (CO2 laser) was one of the earliest gas lasers to be developed. It was invented by Kumar Patel of Bell Labs in 1964 and is still one of the most useful types of laser. Carbon-dioxide lasers are the highest-power continuous-wave lasers that are currently available. They are also quite efficient: the ratio of output power to pump power can be as large as 20%. The CO2 laser produces a beam of infrared light with the principal wavelength bands centering on 9.6 and 10.6 micrometers (μm).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mildred Dresselhaus</span> American physicist

Mildred Dresselhaus, known as the "Queen of Carbon Science", was an American nanotechnologist. She was an Institute Professor and Professor Emerita of physics and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dresselhaus won numerous awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the Enrico Fermi Award and the Vannevar Bush Award.

Rolf William Landauer was a German-American physicist who made important contributions in diverse areas of the thermodynamics of information processing, condensed matter physics, and the conductivity of disordered media. Born in Germany, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1938, obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard in 1950, and then spent most of his career at IBM.

Calvin Forrest Quate was one of the inventors of the atomic force microscope. He was a professor emeritus of Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University.

Federico Capasso, a prominent applied physicist, was one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. He has co-authored over 450 papers, edited four volumes, and holds over 60 US patents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Roy Whinnery</span>

John Roy Whinnery was an American electrical engineer and educator who worked in the fields of microwave theory and laser experimentation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Floyd Dunn</span>

Floyd Dunn was an American electrical engineer who made contributions to all aspects of the interaction of ultrasound and biological media. Dr. Dunn was a member of Scientific Committee 66 of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements as well as many FDA, NIH, AIUM, and ASA committees. He collaborated with scientists in the UK, Japan, China and Post-Soviet states.

Cassius Chapin Cutler was an American electrical engineer at Bell Labs. His notable achievements include the invention of the corrugated waveguide and differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM).

Stewart E. Miller was a noted American pioneer in microwave and optical communications.

Andrew H. Bobeck was a Bell Labs researcher best known for his invention of bubble memory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William B. Bridges</span>

William B. Bridges is the Carl F Braun Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics in the Engineering and Applied Science division at the California Institute of Technology. Born in Inglewood, California, he is the discover/inventor of the Argon Ion laser, and holds the patent for the Ionized Noble Gas Laser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ajay K. Sood</span> Indian physicist

Ajay Kumar Sood is an Indian physicist, researcher and is serving as the 4th Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. He is also holder of 2 US and 5 Indian patents, known for his pioneering research findings on graphene and nanotechnology. He is a Distinguished Honorary Professor of Physics at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The Government of India honoured him in 2013, with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for his contributions to the fields of science and technology. Sood was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2015. He has been on the Physical Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize from 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John E. Bowers</span>

John E. Bowers is an American physicist, engineer, researcher and educator. He is the Fred Kavli Chair in Nanotechnology, the director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency and a distinguished professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Materials at University of California, Santa Barbara. He was the deputy director of American Institute of Manufacturing of Integrated Photonics from 2015 to 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jagdish Narayan</span> Indian-born American engineer

Jagdish Narayan is an Indian-born American engineer. Since 2001, he has served as the John C. C. Fan Family Distinguished Chair Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at North Carolina State University. He is also the distinguished visiting scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Narayan has published above 500 high-impact journal articles, with his discoveries covered in over 40 US and international patents. His body of work can be segregated into highly nonequilibrium laser processing of novel nanomaterials, including Q-carbon, Q-BN, diamond and c-BN related materials. These research articles have received over 31,000 Google Citations with h-index >85. Narayan and his students discovered Q-carbon as the new allotrope, thereby finding a new route to fabricate diamond and related materials in ambient conditions, resulting in properties and applications ranging from high-temperature superconductivity in boron-doped Q-carbon to hardness than diamond in Q-carbon to enhanced field-emission in Q-carbon to nitrogen-doped nanodiamonds for quantum computing, nanosensing and solid-state devices.

References

  1. Patel, C. K. N. (1964). "Continuous-Wave Laser Action on Vibrational-Rotational Transitions of CO2". Physical Review. 136 (5A): A1187–A1193. Bibcode:1964PhRv..136.1187P. doi: 10.1103/PhysRev.136.A1187 .
  2. "C. Kumar N. Patel". The American Institute of Physics. 27 March 2015. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  3. "The President's National Medal of Science: Recipient Details". The National Science Foundation. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  4. "C. Kumar N. Patel" . Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  5. "MIT Inventor of the Week: Kumar Patel". The Lemelson-MIT Program. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  6. "UCLA Members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences". UCLA. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  7. "AAAS Fellows" (PDF). Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  8. "C. Kumar N. Patel". The Optical Society. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  9. "Fellow Award". Laser Institute of America. 8 May 2017. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  10. "C. Kumar N. Patel". CCST. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  11. "American Laser Study Club Names C. Kumar N. Patel as Honorary Member". India West. 30 May 2018. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  12. "Kumar Patel Prize". American Laser Study Club. Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  13. "Laser Scientist, Patel, Gets Ballantine Medal". Physics Today. 21 (111): 119. 1968. doi:10.1063/1.3034571.
  14. "IEEE Medal of Honor Revcipients" (PDF). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Retrieved 7 September 2019.
  15. "National Medal of Science". National Science and Technology Medals Foundation. Retrieved 12 March 2022.