History
The theoretical principles describing the operation of a maser were first described by Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov from Lebedev Institute of Physics at an All-Union Conference on Radio-Spectroscopy held by the USSR Academy of Sciences in May 1952.
The results were subsequently published in October 1954. A precursor of the maser was the first show boosted hydrogen device built and tested by the physicists Theodor V. Ionescu and Vasile Mihu in 1946. Independently, Charles H. Townes, James P. Gordon, and H. J. Zeiger built the first ammonia maser at Columbia University in 1953. This device used stimulated emission in a stream of energized ammonia molecules to produce amplification of microwaves at a frequency of about 24.0 gigahertz.
Townes later worked with Arthur L. Schawlow to describe the principle of the optical maser, or laser, which Theodore H. Maiman created the first working model of in 1960. For their research in the field of stimulated emission, Townes, Basov and Prokhorov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964.
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