Charles Kuen Kao
Name in native script: 高錕
1933–2018, Shanghai, China, Hong Kong
British-American physicist of Chinese descent, the 'father of fiber optics', who showed that ultra-pure glass fibers could carry light tens of kilometres for telecommunications.
In 1966 at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Kao (with George Hockham) demonstrated that attenuation in optical fibers came from impurities rather than the glass itself, predicting fibers with loss under 20 dB/km — the insight that enabled today's broadband internet. He later became vice-chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Nobel-winning work
In 1966 Kao and George Hockham argued that glass fibers with sufficiently low impurities could carry light signals over tens of kilometres. Fibres matching the predicted loss were fabricated a few years later (Corning, 1970), and fiber optics became the backbone of global telecommunications and the Internet.
Workplaces: Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Chinese University of Hong Kong
United Kingdom, Hong Kong SAR China, United States