Table 1.
Milestones in the Lasers development
| YEAR | PHYSICIANS | DISCOVERY |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Ali Javan, William Bennett Jr. and Donald Herriott | Helium-neon (HeNe) laser |
| 1960 | Peter P. Sorokin and Mirek J. Stevenson | Uranium laser |
| 1961 | Leo F. Johnson and Kurt Nassau | Neodymium-doped solid state laser |
| 1961 | J. McClung and Robert W. Hellwarth | Quality switching (Q- switching) technique to shorten the pulse length to nanoseconds |
| 1962 | Sumner Mayburg and Jacques Pankove | Semiconductor Diode Lasers |
| 1964 | William Bridges | Argon Laser |
| 1964 | Joseph E. Geusic and Richard G. Smith | Nd: YAG (neodymium-doped YAG) laser |
| 1964 | Kumar Patel | carbon dioxide laser |
| 1967 | Bernard Soffer and Bill McFarland | Dye laser |
| 1970 | Basov, V.A. Danilychev and Yu. M. Popov | Excimer laser |
| 1972 | Charles H. Henry | Quantum well laser |
| 1976 | John M.J. Madey | Free-electron laser (FEL). |
| 1994 | Jérôme Faist, Federico Capasso, Deborah L. Sivco, Carlo Sirtori, Albert L. Hutchinson and Alfred Y. Cho | Semiconductor laser that can simultaneously emit light at multiple widely separated wavelengths |
| 1996 | Wolfgang Ketterle | Pulsed atom laser |
| 1997 | Shuji Nakamura, Steven P. DenBaars and James S. Speck | Gallium-nitride (GaN) laser |
| 2009 | Chunlei Guo | Femtosecond pulsed laser |