OSA honours for pioneering work in crystals and fibre

17 Jun 2002

The OpticalSociety of America has awarded its 1998 Engineering Excellence Awards toLee Shiozawa of Cleveland Crystals Inc and Kenneth Walker of Bell Labs(part of the Lucent group). Shiozawa has spent 45 years researchingelectro-optics and nonlinear optical crystals for applications from theultraviolet to the far-infrared. At Cleveland Crystals he guided thedevelopment of KDP crystals, which will play an integral role inLawrence Livermore's USD 12bn National Ignition Facility, the nuclearbomb simulator and equivalent of France's Megajoule. Kenneth Walker isrecognized for his work on metal organic chemical vapour deposition foroptical fibre manufacture. He is also a key figure in the development ofthe erbium-doped optical fibre amplifier and co-inventor of Lucent'sTrueWave fibre.