Laser inventor and Nobel laureate Charles Townes dies at 99

I met him when he was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 1978, and got his autograph on the program. Really a nice man - very self-effacing and gracious.

The Berkeley memoriam talks about his work with masers and lasers, but also mentions his contributions to the beginnings of infrared astronomy, and the evidence for a black hole being in the center of our galaxy. He really had wide-ranging interests and talents.

Some discussion from yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8957090

Interestingly, he was unable to understand the incompatibility between religion and science (including his own fundamentalist beliefs), arguing rather weakly that they are both part of the same thing. One wonders why he ever bothered to do a single experiment.

To someone downvoting - don't you find it interesting that someone so brilliant can have such difficulty with simple concepts even a child can grasp?