Charles Townes is generally considered the American inventor of the maser (an acronym for microwave amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation), an honor he shares with two Russian scientists, Aleksandr Prokhorov and Nikolai Basov. The microwave theories he introduced and pursued throughout the 1960s paved the way for such advances as the modern laser.

The son of a South Carolina attorney, Townes studied modern languages and physics at Furman University in his home town of Greenville, S.C., graduating summa cum laude in 1935. He obtained his master's degree in one year at Duke University and his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology in 1939. After completing his education, Townes worked for Bell Telephone Laboratories on the design of radar bombing systems, in support of the U.S. effort in World War II. It was during these years at Bell that Townes' interest in microwave technology bloomed...