Arthur Schawlow

Schawlow, whose father was a Jewish immigrant from Riga (his family raising him Protestant), worked with Charles Townes to design the principles of the optical laser before turning it into a research tool. He developed laser spectroscopy, using precisely tuned laser light to measure atomic and molecular energy levels with extraordinary accuracy. For this contribution to high-resolution spectroscopy he shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics, giving chemists and physicists a way to read the fine structure of matter.