I was born in Budapest, Hungary, on June
5, 1900, the oldest son of Bertalan Gabor, director of a mining
company, and his wife Adrienne. My life-long love of physics
started suddenly at the age of 15. I could not wait until I got
to the university, I learned the calculus and worked through the
textbook of Chwolson, the largest at that time, in the next two
years. I remember how fascinated I was by Abbe's theory of the
microscope and by Gabriel Lippmann's method of colour
photography, which played such a great part in my work, 30 years
later. Also, with my late brother George, we built up a little
laboratory in our home, where we could repeat most experiments
which were modern at that time, such as wireless X-rays and
radioactivity. Yet, when I reached university age, I opted for
engineering instead of physics. Physics was not yet a profession
in Hungary, with a total of half-a-dozen university chairs - and
who could have been presumptious enough to aspire to one of
these?
So I acquired my degrees, (Diploma at the Technische Hochschule
Berlin, 1924, Dr-Ing. in 1927), in electrical engineering,
though I sneaked over from the TH as often as possible to the
University of Berlin, were physics at that time was at its
apogee, with Einstein, Planck, Nernst and v. Laue. Though
electrical engineering remained my profession, my work was almost
always in applied physics. My doctorate work was the development
of one of the first high speed cathode ray oscillographs and in
the course of this I made the first iron-shrouded magnetic
electron lens. In 1927 I joined the Siemens & Halske AG where
I made my first of my successful inventions; the high pressure
quartz mercury lamp with superheated vapour and the molybdenum
tape seal, since used in millions of streeet lamps. This was also
my first exercise in serendipity, (the art of looking for
something and finding something else), because I was not after a
mercury lamp but after a cadmium lamp, and that was not a
success.
In 1933, when Hitler came to power, I left Germany and after a
short period in Hungary went to England. At that time, in 1934,
England was still in the depths of the depression, and jobs for
foreigners were very difficult. I obtained employment with the
British Thomson-Houston Co., Rugby, on an inventor's agreement.
The invention was a gas discharge tube with a positive
characteristic, which could be operated on the mains.
Unfortunately, most of its light emission was in the short
ultraviolet, so that it failed to give good efficiency with the
available fluorescent powders, but at least it gave me a foothold
in the BTH Research Laboratory, where I remained until the end of
1948. The years after the war were the most fruitful. I wrote,
among many others, my first papers on communication theory, I
developed a system of stereoscopic cinematography, and in the
last year, 1948 I carried out the basic experiments in
holography, at that time called "wavefront reconstruction". This
again was an exercise in serendipity. The original objective was
an improved electron microscope, capable of resolving atomic
lattices and seeing single atoms. Three year's work, 1950-53,
carried out in collaboration with the AEI Research Laboratory in
Aldermaston, led to some respectable results, but still far from
the goal. We had started 20 years too early. Only in recent years
have certain auxiliary techniques developed to the point when
electron holography could become a success. On the other hand,
optical holography has become a world success after the invention
and introduction of the laser, and acoustical holography has now
also made a promising start.
On January 1, 1949 I joined the Imperial College of Science & Technology
in London, first as a Reader in Electronics, later as Professor
of Applied Electron Physics, until my retirement in 1967. This
was a happy time. With my young doctorands as collaborators I
attacked many problems, almost always difficult ones. The first
was the elucidation of Langmuirs Paradox, the inexplicably
intense apparent electron interaction, in low pressure mercury
arcs. The explanation was that the electrons exchanged energy not
with one another, by collisions, but by interaction with an
oscillating boundary layer at the wall of the discharge vessel.
We made also a Wilson cloud chamber, in which the velocity of
particles became measurable by impressing on them a high
frequency, critical field, which produced time marks on the
paths, at the points of maximum ionisation. Other developments
were: a holographic microscope, a new electron-velocity
spectroscope an analogue computer which was a universal,
non-linear "learning" predictor, recognizer and simulator of time
series, a flat thin colour television tube, and a new type of
thermionic converter. Theoretical work included communication
theory, plasma theory, magnetron theory and I spent several years
on a scheme of fusion, in which a critical high temperature
plasma would have been established by a 1000 ampere space
charge-compensated ion beam, fast enough to run over the many
unstable modes which arise during its formation. Fortunately the
theory showed that at least one unstable mode always remained, so
that no money had to be spent on its development.
After my retirement in 1967 I remained connected with the
Imperial College as a Senior Research Fellow and I became Staff
Scientist of CBS Laboratories, Stamford, Conn. where I have
collaborated with the President, my life-long friend, Dr. Peter
C. Goldmark in many new schemes of communication and display.
This kept me happily occupied as an inventor, but meanwhile, ever
since 1958, I have spent much time on a new interest; the future
of our industrial civilisation. I became more and more convinced
that a serious mismatch has developed between technology and our
social institutions, and that inventive minds ought to consider
social inventions as their first priority. This conviction has
found expression in three books, Inventing the Future,
1963, Innovations, 1970, and The Mature Society,
1972. Though I still have much unfinished technological work on
my hands, I consider this as my first priority in my remaining
years.
Honours |
Fellow of the Royal Society, 1956. |
Hon. Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1964. |
D.Sc. Univ. of London, 1964, Hon. D.Sc. Univ. of Southampton, 1970, and Technological University Delft, 1971. |
Thomas Young Medal of Physical Society
London, 1967. Cristoforo Colombo Prize of Int. Inst. Communications, Genoa, 1967. |
Albert Michelson Medal of The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, 1968. Rumford Medal of the Royal Society, 1968. |
Medal of Honor of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers,1970. Prix Holweck of the French Physical Society, 1971. Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 1970. |
Married since 1936 to Marjorie Louise, daughter of Joseph Kennard Butler and Louise Butler of Rugby. |
From Les Prix Nobel en 1971, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1972
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Dennis Gabor died on February 8, 1979.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1971