Editing Arthur Leonard Schawlow (section)

==Biography==
Schawlow was born in [[Mount Vernon, New York]]. His mother, Helen (Mason), was from [[Canada]], and his father, Arthur Schawlow, was a Jewish [[immigration|immigrant]] from [[Riga]] (then in the [[Russian Empire]], now in [[Latvia]]). Schawlow was raised in his mother's Protestant religion.<ref name=adherents>{{cite web|url=http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Arthur_Schawlow.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070714082844/http://www.adherents.com/people/ps/Arthur_Schawlow.html|url-status=usurped|archive-date=July 14, 2007|title=The religion of Arthur Schawlow, Nobel Prize-winning physicist; worked with lasers|website=www.adherents.com}}</ref> When Arthur was three years old, they moved to [[Toronto|Toronto, Ontario]], Canada.

At the age of 16, he completed [[high school]] at [[Vaughan Road Academy]] (then Vaughan Collegiate Institute), and received a scholarship in science at the [[University of Toronto]] (Victoria College). After earning his [[undergraduate degree]], Schawlow continued in [[graduate school]] at the University of Toronto which was interrupted due to [[World War II]]. At the end of the war, he began work on his [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D]] at the university with Professor [[Malcolm Crawford]]. He then took a [[Postdoctoral researcher|postdoctoral]] position with [[Charles H. Townes]] at the physics department of [[Columbia University]] in the fall of 1949.

He went on to accept a position at [[Bell Labs]] in late 1951. He left in 1961 to join the faculty at [[Stanford University]] as a [[professor]]. He remained at Stanford until he retired to [[emeritus]] status in 1996.

Although his research focused on [[optics]], in particular, lasers and their use in [[spectroscopy]], he also pursued investigations in the areas of [[superconductivity]] and [[nuclear magnetic resonance|nuclear resonance]]. Schawlow shared the 1981 [[Nobel Prize in Physics]] with [[Nicolaas Bloembergen]] and [[Kai Manne Boerje Siegbahn|Kai Siegbahn]] for their contributions to the development of laser spectroscopy.

Schawlow coauthored the widely used text ''Microwave Spectroscopy'' (1955) with Charles Townes. Schawlow and Townes were the first to publish the theory of laser design and operation in their seminal 1958 paper on "optical masers",<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schawlow |first=Arthur L.  |author-link=Arthur Leonard Schawlow |author2=Townes, Charles H. |date=December 1958 |title=Infrared and optical masers |journal=Physical Review |volume=112 |issue=6–15 |pages=1940–1949 |doi=10.1103/PhysRev.112.1940 |bibcode = 1958PhRv..112.1940S |doi-access=free }}</ref> although [[Gordon Gould]] is often credited with the "invention" of the laser, due to his unpublished work that predated Schawlow and Townes by a few months.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taylor |first=Nick |title=LASER: The inventor, the Nobel laureate, and the thirty-year patent war |year=2000 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |location=New York |isbn=0-684-83515-0 |oclc=122973716 |pages=62–70}}</ref> The first working laser was made in 1960 by [[Theodore Harold Maiman|Theodore Maiman]].

In 1991, the [[NEC Corporation]] and the [[American Physical Society]] established a prize: the [[Arthur L. Schawlow Prize in Laser Science]]. The prize is awarded annually to "candidates who have made outstanding contributions to basic research using lasers."