Dennis Gabor ( ; ; 5 June 1900 – 9 February 1979) was a Hungarian-British

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

who received the

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

in 1971 for his invention of

holography Holography is a technique that allows a wavefront to be recorded and later reconstructed. It is best known as a method of generating three-dimensional images, and has a wide range of other uses, including data storage, microscopy, and interfe ...

. He obtained British citizenship in 1946 and spent most of his life in England.

Life and career

Gabor was born as Günszberg Dénes, into a

Jewish family Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, Austria-Hungary. In 1900, his family converted to

Lutheranism Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

. Dennis was the first-born son of Günszberg Bernát and Jakobovits Adél. Despite having a religious background, religion played a minor role in his later life and he considered himself agnostic. In 1902, the family received permission to change their surname from Günszberg to Gábor. He served with the Hungarian artillery in northern Italy during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. He began his studies in engineering at the

Budapest University of Technology and Economics The Budapest University of Technology and Economics ( or in short ), official abbreviation BME, is a public research university located in Budapest, Hungary. It is the most significant university of technology in the country and is considered ...

in 1918, later in Germany, at the ''Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg'' in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

, now known as

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public university, public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first ...

. At the start of his career, he analysed the properties of high voltage electric transmission lines by using cathode-beam oscillographs, which led to his interest in electron optics. Studying the fundamental processes of the oscillograph, Gabor was led to other electron-beam devices such as

electron microscopes An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

and TV tubes. He eventually wrote his PhD thesis on Recording of Transients in Electric Circuits with the Cathode Ray Oscillograph in 1927, and worked on

plasma lamp Plasma lamps are a type of electrodeless gas-discharge lamp energized by radio frequency (RF) power. They are distinct from the novelty plasma lamps that were popular in the 1980s. The internal-electrodeless lamp was invented by Nikola Tesla ...

s. In 1933 Gabor fled from

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

, where he was considered Jewish, and was invited to

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

to work at the development department of the

British Thomson-Houston British Thomson-Houston (BTH) was a British engineering and heavy industry, heavy industrial company, based at Rugby, Warwickshire, England. Originally founded to sell products from the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, it soon became a manufac ...

company in

Rugby, Warwickshire Rugby is a market town in eastern Warwickshire, England, close to the River Avon, Warwickshire, River Avon. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census, its population was 78,117, making it the List of Warwickshire towns by population, secon ...

. During his time in Rugby, he met Marjorie Louise Butler, and they married in 1936. He became a

British citizen The primary law governing nationality in the United Kingdom is the British Nationality Act 1981, which came into force on 1 January 1983. Regulations apply to the British Islands, which include the UK itself (England, Wales, Scotland, and Nor ...

in 1946, and it was while working at British Thomson-Houston in 1947 that he invented holography, based on an

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it ...

, and thus electrons instead of visible light. He experimented with a heavily filtered mercury arc light source. The earliest visual hologram was only realised in 1964 following the 1960 invention of the

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

, the first

coherent Coherence is, in general, a state or situation in which all the parts or ideas fit together well so that they form a united whole. More specifically, coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following: Physics * Coherence (physics ...

light source. After this, holography became commercially available. Gabor's research focused on electron inputs and outputs, which led him to the invention of holography. The basic idea was that for perfect optical imaging, the total of all the information has to be used; not only the amplitude, as in usual optical imaging, but also the phase. In this manner, a complete holo-spatial picture can be obtained. Gabor published his theories of holography in a series of papers between 1946 and 1951. Gabor also researched how human beings communicate and hear; the result of his investigations was the theory of

granular synthesis Granular synthesis is a sound synthesis method that operates on the microsound time scale. It is based on the same principle as sampling. However, the samples are split into small pieces of around 1 to 100 ms in duration. These small pieces a ...

, although

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

composer

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; , ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and enginee ...

claimed that he was actually the first inventor of this synthesis technique. Gabor's work in this and related areas was foundational in the development of

time–frequency analysis In signal processing, time–frequency analysis comprises those techniques that study a signal in both the time and frequency domains simultaneously, using various time–frequency representations. Rather than viewing a 1-dimensional signal (a fun ...

. In 1948 Gabor moved from Rugby to

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

, and in 1958 became professor of

Applied Physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination of fac ...

until his retirement in 1967. His inaugural lecture on 3 March 1959, 'Electronic Inventions and their Impact on Civilisation' provided inspiration for

Norbert Wiener Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American computer scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. He became a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener late ...

's treatment of self-reproducing machines in the penultimate chapter in the 1961 edition of his book ''Cybernetics''. As part of his many developments related to CRTs, in 1958 Gabor patented a new

flat screen television A flat-panel display (FPD) is an electronic display used to display visual content such as text or images. It is present in consumer, medical, transportation, and industrial equipment. Flat-panel displays are thin, lightweight, provide better ...

concept. This used an

electron gun file:Egun.jpg, Electron gun from a cathode-ray tube file:Vidicon Electron Gun.jpg, The electron gun from an RCA Vidicon video camera tube An electron gun (also called electron emitter) is an electrical component in some vacuum tubes that produc ...

aimed perpendicular to the screen, rather than straight at it. The beam was then directed forward to the screen using a series of fine metal wires on either side of the beam path. The concept was significantly similar to the

Aiken tube The Aiken tube was the first successful flat panel black-and-white television. Originally designed in the early 1950s, a small number of tubes were built in 1958 for military use in a collaboration with Kaiser Industries. An extended patent battle ...

, introduced in the US the same year. This led to a many-years patent battle which resulted in Aiken keeping the US rights and Gabor the UK. Gabor's version was later picked up by

Clive Sinclair Sir Clive Marles Sinclair (30 July 1940 – 16 September 2021) was an English entrepreneur and inventor, best known for being a pioneer in the computing industry and also as the founder of several companies that developed consumer electronics ...

in the 1970s, and became a decades-long quest to introduce the concept commercially. Its difficult manufacturing, due to the many wires within the vacuum tube, meant this was never successful. While looking for a company willing to try to manufacture it, Sinclair began negotiations with Timex, who instead took over production of the

ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-c ...

. In 1963 Gabor published ''Inventing the Future'' which discussed the three major threats Gabor saw to modern society: war, overpopulation and the Age of Leisure. The book contained the now well-known expression that "the future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented." Reviewer

Nigel Calder Nigel David McKail Ritchie-Calder (2 December 1931 – 25 June 2014) was a British science writer and climate change skeptic. Early life Nigel Calder was born on 2 December 1931. His father was Ritchie Calder. His mother was Mabel Jane For ...

described his concept as, "His basic approach is that we cannot predict the future, but we can invent it..." Others such as

Alan Kay Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) published by the Association for Computing Machinery 2012 is an American computer scientist who pioneered work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface (GUI) design. At Xerox ...

Peter Drucker Peter Ferdinand Drucker (; ; November 19, 1909 – November 11, 2005) was an Austrian American management consultant, educator, and author, whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of modern management theory. H ...

, and Forrest Shaklee have used various forms of similar quotes. His next book, ''Innovations: scientific, technological, and social'' which was published in 1970, expanded on some of the topics he had already earlier touched upon, and also pointed to his interest in technological innovation as mechanism of both liberation and destruction. Dennis Gabor 1971

In 1971 he was the single recipient of the

with the motivation "for his invention and development of the holographic method" and presented the history of the development of holography from 1948 in his Nobel lecture. While spending much of his retirement in Italy at

Lavinio Lavinio (Lido di Enea) is a small sea side tourist town in the Lazio region of Italy, southwest of Rome. It is part of the municipality of Anzio. History The name is derived from ancient Latin settlement of Lavinium, now from the sea, and par ...

Rome, he remained connected with Imperial College as a senior research fellow and also became staff scientist of

CBS Laboratories CBS Laboratories or CBS Labs (later known as the CBS Technology Center or CTC) was the technology research and development organization of the CBS television network. Innovations developed at the labs included many groundbreaking broadcast, industr ...

, in

Stamford, Connecticut Stamford () is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, outside of New York City. It is the sixth-most populous city in New England. Stamford is also the largest city in the Western Connecticut Planning Region, Connecticut, Weste ...

; there, he collaborated with his lifelong friend, CBS Labs' president Dr. Peter C. Goldmark in many new schemes of communication and display. One of Imperial College's new halls of residence in Prince's Gardens,

Knightsbridge Knightsbridge is a residential and retail district in central London, south of Hyde Park, London, Hyde Park. It is identified in the London Plan as one of two international retail centres in London, alongside the West End of London, West End. ...

is named Gabor Hall in honour of Gabor's contribution to Imperial College. He developed an interest in social analysis and published ''The Mature Society: a view of the future'' in 1972. He also joined the

Club of Rome The Club of Rome is a nonprofit, informal organization of intellectuals and business leaders whose goal is a critical discussion of pressing list of global issues, global issues. The Club of Rome was founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in R ...

and supervised a working group studying energy sources and technical change. The findings of this group were published in the report ''Beyond the Age of Waste'' in 1978, a report which was an early warning of several issues that only later received widespread attention. Following the rapid development of lasers and a wide variety of holographic applications (e.g., art, information storage, and the recognition of patterns), Gabor achieved acknowledged success and worldwide attention during his lifetime. He received numerous awards besides the Nobel Prize. Gabor died in a nursing home in

South Kensington South Kensington is a district at the West End of Central London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Historically it settled on part of the scattered Middlesex village of Brompton. Its name was supplanted with the advent of the ra ...

, London, on 9 February 1979. In 2006 a

blue plaque A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the United Kingdom, and certain other countries and territories, to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person, event, or former building on the site, serving a ...

was put up on No. 79

Queen's Gate Queen's Gate is a street in South Kensington, London, England. It runs south from Kensington Gardens' Queen's Gate (the edge of which gardens are here followed by Kensington Road) to Old Brompton Road, intersecting Cromwell Road. The street i ...

Kensington Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensingt ...

, where he lived from 1949 until the early 1960s.

Personal life

On 8 August 1936, he married Marjorie Louise Butler. They did not have any children.

Publications

*The Electron Microscope (1934) *Inventing the Future (1963) *Innovations: Scientific, Technological, and Social (1970) *The Mature Society (1972) *Proper Priorities of Science and Technology (1972) *Beyond the Age of Waste: A Report to the Club of Rome (1979, with U. Colombo, A. King en R. Galli)

Awards and honors

* 1956 – Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) *1964 – Honorary Member of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

*1964 – D.Sc.,

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

*1967 –

Young Medal and Prize The Institute of Physics (IOP) awards numerous prizes to acknowledge contributions to physics research, education and applications. It also offers smaller specific subject-group prizes, such as for PhD thesis submissions. Bilateral awards * The ...

, for distinguished research in the field of

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes t ...

*1967 – Columbus Award of the International Institute for Communications,

Genoa Genoa ( ; ; ) is a city in and the capital of the Italian region of Liguria, and the sixth-largest city in Italy. As of 2025, 563,947 people live within the city's administrative limits. While its metropolitan city has 818,651 inhabitan ...

*1968 – The first

Albert A. Michelson Medal The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memoria ...

from The

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and a center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and wikt:statesman, statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

*1968 –

Rumford Medal The Rumford Medal is an award bestowed by the Royal Society for "outstanding contributions in the field of physics". The award is named in honour of British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who is noted for his works on thermody ...

of the Royal Society *1970 –

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or '' ad hon ...

University of Southampton The University of Southampton (abbreviated as ''Soton'' in post-nominal letters) is a public university, public research university in Southampton, England. Southampton is a founding member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universit ...

*1970 –

Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest Awards and decorations of the United States Armed Forces, military decoration and is awarded to recognize American United States Army, soldiers, United States Navy, sailors, Un ...

of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

*1970 – Commander of the

Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...

(CBE) *1971 –

, for his invention and development of the holographic method *1971 –

Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...

*1972 – Holweck Prize of the Société Française de Physique *1972 – Honorary Member of the Optical Society of America *1983 – the

International Society for Optical Engineering SPIE (formerly the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers, later the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers) is an international not-for-profit professional society for optics and photonics technology, founded in 1955. It ...

(SPIE) established the annual Dennis Gabor Award, "in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in diffractive wavefront technologies, especially those which further the development of holography and

metrology Metrology is the scientific study of measurement. It establishes a common understanding of Unit of measurement, units, crucial in linking human activities. Modern metrology has its roots in the French Revolution's political motivation to stan ...

applications." *1989 – the

Royal Society of London The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, r ...

began issuing the

Gabor Medal The Gabor Medal is Awards, lectures and medals of the Royal Society, one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "acknowledged distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines". The medal was creat ...

for "acknowledged distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines". *1992 – Gábor Dénes College in

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, is named after Gabor. *1993 – the NOVOFER Foundation of the

established its annual

International Dennis Gabor Award The International Dennis Gabor Award (1993–2010) was established by the NOVOFER Foundation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to recognize scientific achievements with practical applications. It was named after Nobel Prize laureate Dennis Ga ...

, for outstanding young scientists researching in the fields of physics and applied technology. *2000 – the asteroid 72071 Gábor is named after Gabor. * 2008 – the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

renamed its Duddell Medal and Prize, established in 1923, into the

Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize The Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize (previously the Duddell Medal and Prize until 2008) is a prize awarded biannually by the Institute of Physics for distinguished contributions to the application of physics in an industrial, commercial or business ...

. * 2009 – Imperial College London opened the Gabor Hall.Eastside Halls
imperial.ac.uk * Dennis-Gabor-Straße in

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and largest city of the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the Havel, River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

is named in his honour and is the location of the Potsdamer Centrum für Technologie.

In popular culture

*The Gabor family from the animated TV series ''

Jem and The Holograms ''Jem and The Holograms'', also known as simply ''Jem'', is an American animated musical television series that ran from 1985 to 1988. The series is about record company owner Jerrica Benton, her singer alter-ego Jem, and the adventures of her ...

'' was named after Dennis Gabor. * On 5 June 2010, the logo for the

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

website was drawn to resemble a hologram in honour of Dennis Gabor's 110th birthday. * In

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is best known for his 1996 novel ''Infinite Jest'', which ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine ...

's ''

Infinite Jest ''Infinite Jest'' is a 1996 novel by American writer David Foster Wallace. Categorized as an encyclopedic novel, ''Infinite Jest'' is featured in ''Time'' magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. ...

'', Hal suggests that "Dennis Gabor may very well have been the Antichrist."

References

Hungarian physicists

External links

* including the Nobel Lecture, 11 December 1970 ''Magnetism and the Local Molecular Field''
Nobel Prize presentation speech
by Professor Erik Ingelstam of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Gabor, Dennis 1900 births 1979 deaths Nobel laureates in Physics British Nobel laureates Hungarian Nobel laureates Nobel laureates from Austria-Hungary Academics of Imperial College London Technische Universität Berlin alumni Academic staff of Technische Universität Berlin British agnostics British electrical engineers 20th-century British inventors British Lutherans British Jews 20th-century British physicists Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences Futurologists Hungarian agnostics Hungarian electrical engineers Hungarian emigrants to England 20th-century Hungarian inventors 20th-century Hungarian Jews Hungarian refugees 20th-century Hungarian physicists Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences IEEE Medal of Honor recipients Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism Jewish agnostics Jewish engineers Jewish British physicists People from Pest, Hungary Hungarian emigrants to Germany Converts to Christianity from Judaism Optical engineers