Schawlow, Arthur Leonard (1921–1999)

US physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1981 for the development of laser spectroscopy and is generally considered, with Charles Townes, to be co-inventor of the laser. Schawlow used the laser as a tool to study atomic spectra and their associated energy levels. He derived improved values for atomic constants such as the Rydberg constant. He shared the Nobel Prize with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn.

Schawlow was born in Mount Vernon, New York, USA, and educated at the University of Toronto, Canada, receiving his doctorate in 1949. He joined the Bell Telephone Laboratories, New Jersey, USA, in 1951. There Schawlow worked with Charles Townes on the early work on the maser. In 1961 he became a professor of physics at Stanford University, California.