Annie Jacobsen

But here's another interesting thought about the laser is Charles Townes, and he didn't share this fact for decades.

But later in life, he wrote a lengthy article, I believe it was for the Harvard Alumni Magazine, that the idea for the laser came to him when he was sitting on a park bench from above.

It was a religious experience for him.

Like he'd been working on this problem.

He'd been working on this science problem, according to Charles Townes.

And by the way, he was inspired, he told me, to develop the laser from the time he was a little kid in the 20s reading the Soviet science fiction novel, The Garin Death Ray.

So it's like it was a science fiction concept, a laser.

He's a little kid, Charles Townes, thinking about this, thinking about this, then all through his life continuing to think about it, then running it by his Einstein colleagues.

and then can't make it work, can't make it work, is sitting on a park bench, and he gets the message from above.

He made it sound very much like it was a religious experience for him, but he never wrote about it for a long time because particularly in the 60s and 70s, you couldn't be a scientist and have faith at the same time, or at least you would be belittled or you'd be looked down upon is what he said.

That's interesting.

Bingo.

And it's not just me he told this.

You can read about this in that Harvard article.

And I think he wrote that when he was in his late 80s.

But absolutely.

So he was really making a plug for listening to whatever it is that guides you, which is a very powerful statement.

Mm-hmm.

That, when he told me that, it was so fascinating to me.

I began to explore if there were other Nobel laureates in particular that shared that belief, and there are.