|
Morton B. Panish (born April 8, 1929) is an American physical chemist who, with Izuo Hayashi, developed a room-temperature continuous wave semiconductor laser in 1970. For this achievement he shared the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology in 2001. ==Early life== Morton Panish was born in Brooklyn on April 8, 1929〔〔 to Isidore Panish and Fanny Panish (née Glasser) and grew up in Brooklyn. A brother, Paul, was born six years later. He went to Erasmus Hall High School, graduating in 1947. For two years he attended Brooklyn College, then transferred to the University of Denver "because of a desire to be on my own, to get away from the hay fever I suffered from in NY, and because Gary was there." (Gary Baden was one of his best friends in high school.〔) Initially, Panish specialized in organic chemistry. He had been strongly influenced by a book he read at the age of 12, ''Microbe Hunters'' by Paul de Kruif, which left him with the impression that a scientific career is exciting; and in his final year of high school, he had a substitute teacher for chemistry who was a chemistry graduate student from Columbia University. Panish was fascinated by the teacher's description of his Ph. D. work, which involved synthesizing new organic compounds. He met his future wife, Evelyn Chaim, in an organic chemistry class at Denver University. However, he was attracted to the more mathematical discipline of physical chemistry, which he thought more challenging, and in the end this is what he specialized in. He graduated in 1950.〔 Panish enrolled in graduate school at Michigan State University, majoring in physical chemistry and minoring in organic chemistry. His master's thesis involved a "series of measurements of the electric dipole behavior of some organic compounds," and he did not consider it very challenging.〔 His advisor was Max Rogers, a Canadian and former student of Linus Pauling, and Rogers supervised his Ph. D. work as well, which was on interhalogen compounds. Used to process reactor fuels, these compounds are highly reactive and dangerous, and after Panish had completed his experiments another student was badly injured in an explosion. Panish resolved to work with less dangerous materials in future.〔 From 1954 to 1957 Panish worked for Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, studying the chemical thermodynamics of molten salts. Then he moved to Massachusetts and worked in the Research and Advanced Development Division of AVCO Corporation. The primary contract of this division, with the United States Air Force, was to develop vehicles for the reentry of thermonuclear weapons into the atmosphere. Panish was unwilling to do this work, but the government allotted 5% of the budget to basic research. From 1957 to 1964 he worked on the chemical thermodynamics of refractory compounds, but then decided to leave because the government terminated the funding for basic research.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Morton B. Panish」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|