Morton B. Panish
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Morton B. Panish (born April 8, 1929) is an American physical chemist who, with
Izuo Hayashi (May 1, 1922 – September 26, 2005) was a Japanese physicist. Hayashi was born in Tokyo in 1922 and graduated from the faculty of science, University of Tokyo in 1946. He worked as assistant professor at the Institute for Nuclear Research of th ...
, developed a room-temperature
continuous wave A continuous wave or continuous waveform (CW) is an electromagnetic wave of constant amplitude and frequency, typically a sine wave, that for mathematical analysis is considered to be of infinite duration. It may refer to e.g. a laser or particle ...
semiconductor laser The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD, or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emitting diode in which a diode pumped directly with e ...
in 1970. For this achievement he shared the
Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology is awarded once a year by the Inamori Foundation. The Prize is one of three Kyoto Prize categories; the others are the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. The first Kyo ...
in 2001.


Early life

Morton Panish was born in Brooklyn on April 8, 1929 to Isidore Panish and Fanny Panish (née Glasser) and grew up in Brooklyn. A brother, Paul, was born six years later. He went to
Erasmus Hall High School Erasmus Hall High School was a four-year public high school located at 899–925 Flatbush Avenue between Church and Snyder Avenues in the Flatbush neighborhood of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It was founded in 1786 as Erasmus Hall Aca ...
, graduating in 1947. For two years he attended
Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...
, then transferred to the
University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private university, private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Mountain States, Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is ...
"because of a desire to be on my own, to get away from the hay fever I suffered from in NY, and because Gary was there." (Gary Baden was one of his best friends in high school.) Initially, Panish specialized in
organic chemistry Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline within chemistry involving the scientific study of the structure, properties, and reactions of organic compounds and organic materials, i.e., matter in its various forms that contain carbon atoms.Clayden, J.; ...
. He had been strongly influenced by a book he read at the age of 12, ''Microbe Hunters'' by
Paul de Kruif Paul Henry de Kruif (, rhyming with "life") (1890–1971) was an American microbiologist and author of Dutch descent. Publishing as Paul de Kruif, he is most noted for his 1926 book, ''Microbe Hunters''. This book was not only a bestseller for a le ...
, which left him with the impression that a scientific career is exciting; and in his final year of high school, he had a substitute teacher for chemistry who was a chemistry graduate student from
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. Panish was fascinated by the teacher's description of his Ph.D. work, which involved synthesizing new organic compounds. He met his future wife, Evelyn Chaim, in an organic chemistry class at Denver University. However, he was attracted to the more mathematical discipline of physical chemistry, which he thought more challenging, and in the end this is what he specialized in. He graduated in 1950. Panish enrolled in graduate school at
Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the fi ...
, majoring in physical chemistry and minoring in organic chemistry. His master's thesis involved a "series of measurements of the electric dipole behavior of some organic compounds," and he did not consider it very challenging. His advisor was Max Rogers, a Canadian and former student of
Linus Pauling Linus Carl Pauling (; February 28, 1901August 19, 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, chemical engineer, peace activist, author, and educator. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific top ...
, and Rogers supervised his Ph.D. work as well, which was on
interhalogen In chemistry, an interhalogen compound is a molecule which contains two or more different halogen atoms (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, or astatine) and no atoms of elements from any other group. Most interhalogen compounds known are binar ...
compounds. Used to process reactor fuels, these compounds are highly reactive and dangerous, and after Panish had completed his experiments another student was badly injured in an explosion. Panish resolved to work with less dangerous materials in future. From 1954 to 1957 Panish worked for
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research and ...
in Tennessee, studying the chemical thermodynamics of molten salts. Then he moved to Massachusetts and worked in the Research and Advanced Development Division of
AVCO Corporation Avco Corporation is a subsidiary of Textron which operates Textron Systems Corporation and Lycoming. History The Aviation Corporation was formed on March 2, 1929, to prevent a takeover of CAM-24 airmail service operator Embry-Riddle Compa ...
. The primary contract of this division, with the
United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...
, was to develop vehicles for the reentry of
thermonuclear weapon A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
s into the atmosphere. Panish was unwilling to do this work, but the government allotted 5% of the budget to basic research. From 1957 to 1964 he worked on the chemical thermodynamics of refractory compounds, but then decided to leave because the government terminated the funding for basic research.


Bell Labs

Before the Oak Ridge job, Panish had applied to
Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
and been rejected, but now they hired him. He started work in June 1964 in the Solid State Electronics Research Laboratory, a group headed by physicist John Galt. He was part of a department working on III-V
semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...
s, compounds in which elements from group III and group V of the periodic table are combined, for example,
gallium arsenide Gallium arsenide (GaAs) is a III-V direct band gap semiconductor with a Zincblende (crystal structure), zinc blende crystal structure. Gallium arsenide is used in the manufacture of devices such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, monoli ...
(GaAs). He planned a series of experiments to look into controlling the impurity elements that determine the electrical properties of the semiconductors. In 1966, Galt asked Panish and
Izuo Hayashi (May 1, 1922 – September 26, 2005) was a Japanese physicist. Hayashi was born in Tokyo in 1922 and graduated from the faculty of science, University of Tokyo in 1946. He worked as assistant professor at the Institute for Nuclear Research of th ...
, a physicist from Japan, to investigate a problem involving
laser diode file:Laser diode chip.jpg, The laser diode chip removed and placed on the eye of a needle for scale A laser diode (LD, also injection laser diode or ILD, or diode laser) is a semiconductor device similar to a light-emitting diode in which a di ...
s. The first such lasers, also known as ''injection lasers'', were developed independently in 1962 by
General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...
groups in Syracuse and Schenectady as well as the Thomas J. Watson Research Center of IBM and the MIT
Lincoln Laboratory The MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense federally funded research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and dev ...
. These early lasers, mostly made out of a single chunk of GaAs, required high current densities to operate, so they could only run continuously at very low temperatures; at room temperature, they could only operate for a fraction of a second. For them to be used in a practical communications system, they would need to operate continuously at room temperature. A solution to the problem was proposed theoretically by
Herbert Kroemer Herbert Kroemer (; born August 25, 1928) is a German-American physicist who, along with Zhores Alferov, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000 for "developing semiconductor heterostructures used in high-speed- and opto-electronics". Kroemer ...
in 1963 – a double heterojunction laser but failed to suggest a suitable (lattice matched) combination semiconductors. The combination of such materials used for the first CW lasers was GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) and Aluminum Gallium Arsenide. The idea was to place a material like GaAs, with a smaller band gap, between two layers of a material such as aluminum gallium arsenide (a solid solution of AlAs and GaAs) that had a larger band gap; this confined the
charge carrier In physics, a charge carrier is a particle or quasiparticle that is free to move, carrying an electric charge, especially the particles that carry electric charges in electrical conductors. Examples are electrons, ions and holes. The term is used ...
s and the optical field (the light) to this layer, reducing the current needed for lasing. Panish and Izuo Hayashi independently developed first the single heterostructure laser and then the double heterostructure laser. However, publication of the announcement of the first room temperature continuously operating double heterostructure laser was by Zhores Alferov in 1970 one month before Hayashi and Panish published similar results. Although there was some degree of contact between the group in Leningrad and the group in New Jersey including a visit by Alferov to the New Jersey lab, the two achievements were obtained independently. Panish experimented with making wafers using a new form of liquid-phase
epitaxy Epitaxy refers to a type of crystal growth or material deposition in which new crystalline layers are formed with one or more well-defined orientations with respect to the crystalline seed layer. The deposited crystalline film is called an epit ...
while Hayashi tested the laser properties. Panish and Hayashi observed what they thought might be CW operation in several wafers in the weeks before their final demonstration. That had to await a laser that lived long enough for a complete plot of the lasing spectrum to be achieved. Over the Memorial Day weekend in 1970, while Panish was at home, Hayashi tried a diode and it emitted a continuous-wave beam at just over 24 degrees Celsius and he was able to plot the complete spectrum with the very slow equipment available at the time. He left a note on Panish's door: "C. W. definite!! at 24°C 10:30 A.M. June 1, 1970." A top manager, in violation of lab rules, brought a couple of bottles of champagne to celebrate. Room-temperature lasers were soon duplicated at RCA Laboratories,
Standard Telecommunication Laboratories Standard Telecommunication Laboratories was the UK research centre for Standard Telephones and Cables (STC). Initially based in Enfield, North London, and moved to Harlow Essex in 1959. STC was a subsidiary of ITT. Notable Achievements It is now ...
and Nippon Electric Corporation (
NEC is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It prov ...
). Over the next few years, the lasers became longer-lasting and more reliable. At Bell Labs, the job of creating a practical device was given to Barney DeLoach. But in January 1973, they told him to cease all work on the problem. As he recalled, their view was "We've already got air, we've already got copper. Who needs a new medium?" The continuous wave semiconductor laser led directly to the light sources in
fiber-optic communication Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of infrared light through an optical fiber. The light is a form of carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is pref ...
, laser printers, barcode readers and
optical disc drive In computing, an optical disc drive is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only r ...
s; but it was mostly Japanese entrepreneurs, not AT&T, that ended up profiting from these technologies. After the work on double heterostructure lasers Panish continued to demonstrate variants of the laser structures with other collaborators in work done through the late 1970s, but the major thrust of his work for the rest of his career (until 1992) was to exploit the new opportunities presented by the use of lattice matched semiconductor heterostructures for other devices (detectors, transistors) and for the study of the physics of small layered structures.


Awards and honors

He shared the
Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology The Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology is awarded once a year by the Inamori Foundation. The Prize is one of three Kyoto Prize categories; the others are the Kyoto Prize in Basic Sciences and the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. The first Kyo ...
in 2001. Electronics Division Award of the Electrochemical Society 1979. He shared the C & C Prize (Japan) with Izuo Hayashi in 1987. Solid State Medalist of the Electrochemical Society 1986. International Crystal Growth Award 1990. Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award of the IEEE 1991. He was the first recipient of the John Bardeen Award of the Metallurgical Society in 1994. Panish was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1986. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1987.


Works

The following are some of the major works by Panish: * * * *


References


External links


Photograph of Panish
(IEEE) {{DEFAULTSORT:Panish, Morton B. American physical chemists 1929 births Living people Brooklyn College alumni Scientists at Bell Labs University of Denver alumni Michigan State University alumni Erasmus Hall High School alumni Scientists from New York (state) Fellows of the American Physical Society Kyoto laureates in Advanced Technology