Kao, Charles Kuen

Kao, Charles Kuen,

1933–, British-American physicist, b. Shanghai, China, Ph.D. Imperial College London, 1965. Kao was an engineer and researcher at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories Ltd. in Great Britain (1957–70 and 1974–87), a faculty member at the Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong (1970–74), and vice chancellor of the Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong (1987–96). Since 1996 he has been chairman and chief executive officer of Transtech Services Ltd., Hong Kong. In 2009, Kao shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Willard BoyleBoyle, Willard Sterling,
1924–2011, Canadian-American solid-state physicist, b. Amherst, N.S., Canada, Ph.D. McGill Univ., Montreal, 1950. Boyle was a researcher at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., from 1950 until his retirement in 1979.
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 and George SmithSmith, George Elwood,
1930–, American physicist, b. White Plains, N.Y., Ph.D., Univ. of Chicago, 1959. Smith was a researcher at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., from 1959 until his retirement in 1986.
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. He was cited for his contributions to the development of fiber opticfiber optics,
transmission of digitized messages or information by light pulses along hair-thin glass or plastic fibers. Each fiber is surrounded by a cladding having a high index of refractance so that the light is internally reflected and travels the length of the fiber
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 technology, which is used to send digitized telecommunications over glass or plastic fibers using pulses of light. His discovery that extremely pure glass would enable optical fibers to transmit light over great distances helped shape the foundation of modern networked societies.