Hasan Ibn al-Haytham was an Arab mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age. Sometimes called "the father of modern optics", he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and visual perception in particular, his most influential work being his Kitāb al-Manāẓir, written during 1011–1021, which survived in the Latin edition. A polymath, he also wrote on philosophy, theology and medicine.
Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviolet, and infrared light. Because light is an electromagnetic wave, other forms of electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays, microwaves, and radio waves exhibit similar properties.
Ernst August Friedrich Ruska was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in electron optics, including the design of the first electron microscope.
The Optical Society (OSA) is a professional association of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals, and organizes conferences and exhibitions. In 2019 it had about 22,000 members in more than 100 different countries, including some 300 companies.
Quantum optics (QO) is a field of research that uses semi-classical and quantum-mechanical physics to investigate phenomena involving light and its interactions with matter at submicroscopic levels. In other words it is quantum mechanics applied to photons or light.
The International Commission for Optics (ICO) was created in 1947 with the objective to contribute, on an international basis, to the progress and dissemination of the science of optics and photonics and their applications. It emphasises the unity of the crossdisciplinary field of optics.
LattisNet was a family of computer networking hardware and software products built and sold by SynOptics Communications during the 1980s. Examples were the 1000, 2500 and 3000 series of LattisHub network hubs.
LattisNet was the first implementation of 10 Megabits per second local area networking over unshielded twisted pair wiring in a star topology.
SPIE is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It organizes technical conferences, trade exhibitions, and continuing education programs for researchers and developers in the light-based fields of physics, including: optics, photonics, and imaging engineering. SPIE is most known for Photonics West, held in San Francisco.
In physics, physical optics, or wave optics, is the branch of optics that studies interference, diffraction, polarization, and other phenomena for which the ray approximation of geometric optics is not valid. This usage tends not to include effects such as quantum noise in optical communication, which is studied in the sub-branch of coherence theory.
Leonard Mandel was the Lee DuBridge Professor Emeritus of Physics and Optics at the University of Rochester when he died at the age of 73 at his home in Pittsford, New York. He contributed immensely to theoretical and experimental optics. With Emil Wolf he published the highly regarded book Optical Coherence and Quantum Optics.
Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, or simply Comptes rendus, is a French scientific journal which has been published since 1666. It is the proceedings of the French Academy of Sciences. It is currently split into seven sections, published on behalf of the Academy by Elsevier: Mathématique, Mécanique, Physique, Géoscience, Palévol, Chimie, and Biologies.
The European Optical Society (EOS), founded in 1991, is a European organisation for the development of the science of optics. Membership is open to national optical societies, individuals, companies, organisations, educational institutions, and learned and professional societies. EOS runs international conferences; lobbies for optical science at European level; offers a focus for collecting and disseminating knowledge in the field, and publishes the online journal JEOS:RP.
Optics Letters is a biweekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by The Optical Society. It was established in July 1977. The current editor-in-chief is Xi-Cheng Zhang of University of Rochester.
Applied Optics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published by The Optical Society three times a month. It was established in 1962 with John N. Howard as founding editor-in-chief. The journal covers all aspects of optics, photonics, imaging, and sensing. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2017 impact factor of 1.791.
The Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published biweekly by IOP Publishing. It was established in 1968 from the division of the earlier title, Proceedings of the Physical Society. In 2006, the Journal of Optics B: Quantum and Semiclassical Optics was merged with the Journal of Physics B. The editor-in-chief is Paul Corkum.
Hermann Anton Haus was a Slovene-American physicist, electrical engineer, and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Haus' research and teaching ranged from fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty as manifested in optical communications to the practical generation of ultra-short optical pulses. In 1994, the Optical Society of America recognized Dr. Haus' contributions with its Frederic Ives Medal, the society's highest award. Haus authored or co-authored five books and published nearly 300 articles and presented his work at virtually every major conference and symposium on laser and quantum electronics and quantum optics around the world. He was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1995 and was adopted into RPI's Alumni Hall of Fame in 2007.
The Journal of Optics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering all aspects of modern and classical optics, experimental and theoretical studies, applications and instrumentation. It is the official journal of the European Optical Society and is published by IOP Publishing. The editor-in-chief is Nikolay I. Zheludev. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2013 impact factor of 2.010.
The Journal of the Optical Society of America is a peer-reviewed scientific journal of optics, published by The Optical Society. It was established in 1917 and in 1984 was split into two parts, A and B.
Girish S. Agarwal, Fellow of the Royal Society UK, is a theoretical physicist. He is currently at the Texas A & M University with affiliations to the Departments of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, and the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering. Earlier he worked as Noble Foundation Chair and the Regents Professor at the Oklahoma State University. He is a recognized leader in the field of quantum optics and also has made major contributions to the fields of nonlinear optics, nanophotonics and plasmonics. In 2013 he published the textbook “Quantum Optics”, covering a wide range of recent developments in the field, which has been well received by the community.
