Charles Kao, who worked at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Harlow, UK, and was vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, recieves the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication”. Kao’s studies indicated in 1966 that low-loss fibres should be possible using high-purity glass, which he proposed could form waveguides with high information capacity.
Willard Boyle and George Smith, who worked at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, share the other half of the prize “for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor”. They sketched out the structure of the CCD in 1969, their aim being better electronic memory – but they went on to revolutionize photography.
