3 Pioneers in Use of Light to Transmit Data Win Nobel Prize in Physics

Three industrial researchers whose discoveries in the 1960s about the transmission of data by optical means helped make possible the telecommunications revolution of the late 20th century will share the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced this morning. The winners of the prize, worth about $1.4-million, are Charles K. Kao, for his work in developing fiber optics as a means of data transmission, and Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, for inventing the charge-coupled device, or CCD, which was the first imaging technology using a digital sensor and has revolutionized research from astronomy to medicine. Mr. Kao, who will receive half of the prize, did his work at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratory, in Harlow, England. Mr. Boyle and Mr. Smith, who will share the other half, worked at Bell Laboratories, in Murray Hill, N.J. Mr. Kao, who later in life became vice chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, is now retired, as are his co-winners. They will receive their prizes at a ceremony in December. The Nobel Prize in Medicine was announced yesterday.