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The following timeline provides a capsule narrative
of RLE’s notable events and achievements, and
some of the individuals who have played key roles in
the Laboratory’s development and growth.
1983 - RLE's
Advanced Television Research Program is established,
with William Schreiber as director.
1985 - Irwin
M. Jacobs, a graduate research assistant in RLE's Statistical
Communication Theory Group in the 1950s and a member
of the RLE faculty in the 1960s, founds Qualcomm, Inc.,
which becomes a global industry leader in advanced communication
systems and products.
1987 - RLE's
Radio Astronomy group, led by RLE's Bernard Burke, demonstrates
the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite Very Long Baseline
Interferometer (VLBI) and produces the world's first
astronomical space-ground VLBI observations.
1991 - RLE's
James G. Fujimoto invents optical coherence tomography
(OCT) by exploiting low coherence interferometry. OCT
becomes a revolutionary new technique to image biological
structures non-invasively.
1995 - Bose-Einstein
condensation is achieved by RLE's Wolfgang Ketterle.
His work improves on the first achievement of BEC by
RLE alumnus Eric Cornell at the University of Colorado
earlier in the year.
1995 - RLE's
Hermann A. Haus is awarded the National Medal of Science
for his brilliant teaching and pioneering research,
which spans fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty
as manifested in optical communications to the practical
generation of ultra-short optical pulses.
1996 - The W.
M Keck Foundation Center for Neural Prostheses is awarded
to RLE. RLE's Donald K. Eddington leads this major multi-institutional,
inter-disciplinary effort to advance the development
of neural prostheses to improve function for the deaf,
the blind, the mute and the balance-impaired.
1996 - The Federal
Communications Commission adopts the Grand Alliance
HDTV System, developed jointly by RLE's Jae S. Lim,
as the digital television standard for the United States.
HDTV broadcasts begin in the United States in 1998.
1997 - RLE's
James G. Fujimoto, working with colleagues at the Massachusetts
General Hospital, demonstrates the use of optical coherence
tomography (OCT) for imaging nontransparent tissue in
living organisms.
1997 - RLE's
Wolfgang Ketterle creates the first atom laser, a device
that is analogous to an optical laser but emits atoms
instead of light.
1997 - William
D. Phillips, who was a graduate research assistant in
RLE's Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics group in
the 1970s, is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics
for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with
laser light.
1998 - Robert
B. Laughlin, who was a graduate research assistant with
RLE's John D. Joannopoulos in the late 1970s, is a co-recipient
of the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of a new
form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.
1999 - RLE's
original home—MIT's Building 20, the Magical Incubator—is
demolished to make way for the new Ray and Maria Stata
Center.
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