Charles Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for his invention of the laser, has died at the age of 99.

"The passing away of Professor Charles Townes today marks the end of an era. He was one of the most important experimental physicists of the last century," said astrophysicist Reinhard Genzel, a colleague and professor of physics at UC Berkeley.

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Townes realized he could create a beam of pure short-wavelength, high-frequency light in 1951 while sitting on a park bench in Washington DC. In 1954, he developed a device called maser, a word that stands for "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". A maser is a device that stimulates molecules to emit microwaves in a coherent burst.

In 1958, he and brother-in-law, and future Nobel Prize winner, Arthur Schawlow, came up with the idea of using mirrors at the ends of a gas tube for light amplification. Townes called this device an "optical maser."

The invention of laser improved applications in medicine and astronomy.

Townes also shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 for his invention with Russian scientists Aleksandr Prokhorov and Nicolai Basov, who independently developed their idea for a maser.

Townes is survived by his wife, Frances Hildreth Townes; daughters Holly Townes, Linda Rosenwein, Ellen Townes-Anderson and Carla Kessler; six grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Tagslaser, maser, optical maser, Nobel Prize in Physics, nobel prize, physics