BERKELEY

Charles Hard Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy, died early Tuesday, Jan. 27. He was 99 and in failing health, and died on his way to the hospital.

Charles Townes embodies the best of Berkeley; hes a great teacher, great researcher and great public servant, said UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks on the occasion of a campuswide celebration of Townes 99th birthday last July 28. As we celebrate this 99-year milestone and a career spanning nearly 80 years, we can only be impressed by the range of his intellectual curiosity, his persistence and his pioneering spirit.

Until last year, Townes visited the campus daily, working either in his office in the physics department or at the Space Sciences Laboratory.

Charlie was a cornerstone of the Space Sciences Laboratory for almost 50 years, said Stuart Bale, director of the lab and a UC Berkeley professor of physics. He trained a great number of excellent students in experimental astrophysics and pioneered a program to develop interferometry at short wavelengths. He was a truly inspiring man and a nice guy. Well miss him.

Charlie Townes had an enormous impact on physics and society in general, said Steven Boggs, professor and chair of the UC Berkeley Department of Physics. Our department and all of UC Berkeley benefited from his wisdom and vision for nearly half a century. His overwhelming dedication to science and personal commitment to remaining active in research was inspirational to all of us. Berkeley physics has lost a true icon and our deepest sympathies go out to his wife, Frances, and the entire Townes family.

The passing away of Professor Charles Townes today marks the end of an era, said astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel, a professor of physics at UC Berkeley and director of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. He was one of the most important experimental physicists of the last century. To those who knew him as colleagues or students, he was a role model, a wonderful mentor and a deeply admired person. His strength was his curiosity and his unshakable optimism, based on his deep Christian spirituality.

Townes, a longtime member of the First Congregational Church of Berkeley, often emphasized the importance of faith in his life, and was honored with the 2005 Templeton Prize for contributions to affirming lifes spiritual dimension.

Revelation

Townes was 35 in the spring of 1951 when, seated on a park bench among blooming azaleas in Washington, D.C., he was struck by the solution to a longstanding problem, how to create a pure beam of short-wavelength, high-frequency light.

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Nobel laureate and laser inventor Charles Townes dies at 99