Tucson Region

Tucson Time Capsule : Nobel winners visited tucson

JIM DAVIS / ARIZONA DAILY STAR 1982 The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is often a name that most people recognize and for accomplishments that most people understand, like Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu and Al Gore. The winners of the other annual prizes, however, are usually not widely recognized figures and their work is usually way beyond most people's comprehension. For example, take Nicolaas Bloembergen, left, and Arthur Schawlow. These two Nobel laureates, who shared the 1981 Nobel Prize for Physics along with that other household name, Kai Siegbahn, were in Tucson on Oct. 20, 1982, to speak at the annual meeting of the Optical Society of America. Bloembergen and Schawlow were honored for their contribution to the development of laser spectroscopy. Schawlow said of their discovery, "We just happened to notice a scattering of light from sodium atoms and discovered we could see individual atoms."