Townes, Charles Hard (b. 1915) Physicist A Life in Physics: Bell Telephone Laboratories and World War II; Columbia University and the Laser; MIT and Government Service; California and Research in Astrophysics, 1994, xxiv.

South Carolina family background; education at Furman, Duke, and Caltech; Bell Telephone Laboratories, 1939-1947, radar work, WWII; Columbia University, professor of physics, microwave spectroscopy lab, 1948-1955; 1951 maser discovery: Office of Naval Research millimeter wave committee, earlier related work, Columbia associates, publication and patent, Russian claims, challenges, patent law; air force and navy interest in maser and laser; International Conference on Quantum Electronics, 1959; vice-president and director of research, Institute for Defense Analyses [IDA]: President's Science Advisory Council, the Jason Group, ARPA, Vietnam; 1964 Nobel prize in physics, and other honors; GM Science and Technical Advisory Committee, and other directorships; MIT provost and professor, 1961-1966, academics in government; UC University Professor since 1967: Berkeley in the sixties, committee work; championing the Apollo program, 1964-1970, problems of MX basing, SDI; move into astrophysics and infrared work at Berkeley; thoughts on religion, responsibility, fallibility, future. Includes an interview with Frances Brown Townes. Appended 1984 talk to Jason Group.

Introduction by Arthur L. Schawlow, Jackson-Wood Professor of Physics, Emeritus, Stanford University.

Interviewed 1991-1992 by Suzanne B. Riess for the University History Series. The Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.