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Nobel Laureate and Laser Inventor Charles Townes Passes
An anonymous reader writes Charles Hard Townes, a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for invention of the laser and subsequently pioneered the use of lasers in astronomy, died early Tuesday in Oakland. He was 99. "Charlie was a cornerstone of the Space Sciences Laboratory for almost 50 years,” said Stuart Bale, director of the lab and a UC Berkeley professor of physics. “He trained a great number of excellent students in experimental astrophysics and pioneered a program to develop interferometry at short wavelengths. He was a truly inspiring man and a nice guy. We’ll miss him.”
This is one of my favorite responses to people who question the money spent on projects like RHIC and LHC. "You're right, there is no known application for this stuff. But aren't you glad nobody listened to your old man when he said the same thing about the laser?"
This is why I loathe the euphemisms for death. I realised this when the man I sailed for (for over a decade) died. It wasn't a massive surprise, but still a shock. To most of us it was the end of an era. What struck me was that most of the others talked about "him passing", whereas I simply said " he died", and I caught a couple of glances when I said it like that.
As another example - my sister was with friends (in a marina on a friend's boat - we like our sailing) and a guy walks down the companionway and said "X is gone". My sister stops talking (people come and go from marinas all the time), and then continues talking. The guy says " are you stupid or what - X has died ", making her feel like a shit.
People die, it happens, but dispense with the euphemisms - there's nothing to be gained from them.