The Optical Society Oral History Project Interview with ... - OSA

Interview with Dr. Anthony Siegman, May 5, 2008 16
some attractive attributes of large mode volume and so on. That idea has since become a
useful technology for various kinds of high power lasers. If the Star Wars lasers had ever
been feasible in many other ways, which they weren't—never were—they probably
would've used unstable resonators. And Bob Byer, whom you talked to earlier, at one
point made a very good high-energy solid-state laser using an unstable resonator, among
other things. So at that point then, I began to switch over more and more from
microwaves into optics and lasers and applications of lasers and techniques for lasers.
LS:
And now we're right in the era at which you joined the Optical Society, which I have as
1961.
AS:
That's interesting. I didn't have that number. That's very likely. Okay.
LS:
This is according to the Optical Society of America's records.
AS:
Okay, I believe it, I believe it!
LS:
If they're accurate, then we can go by that.
LS:
So tell me what you knew about OSA when you joined in '61.
AS:
Well, let's see. Let's first of all say that the primary society for the microwave part of my
career would have been the IEEE, which had previously been the IRE, the Institute of