諾貝爾獎得主高錕，為光纖領(lǐng)域帶來巨變的物理學家

HONG KONG — Charles Kuen Kao, a Nobel laureate in physics whose research in the 1960s revolutionized the field of fiber optics and helped lay the technical groundwork for the information age, died on Sunday in Hong Kong. He was 84.

香港——諾貝爾物理學獎得主高錕周日在香港去世，享年84歲。他在上世紀60年代的研究徹底改變了光纖領(lǐng)域，為信息時代奠定了技術(shù)基礎(chǔ)。

His was confirmed by the Hong Kong-based Charles K. Kao Foundation for Alzheimer’s Disease, which he and his wife, Gwen Kao, founded in 2010. The foundation declined to specify a cause but said that Dr. Kao learned he had the disease in 2002.

他和妻子黃美蕓于2010年為阿茲海默癥成立的高錕慈善基金證實了他的死訊。該基金會拒絕透露他去世的具體原因，但表示高博士于2002年得知自己患有這種疾病。

Working in Britain in the late 1960s, Dr. Kao and a colleague played a crucial role in discovering that the fiber optic cables in use at the time were limited by impurities in their glass. They also outlined the cables’ potential capacity for storing information — one that was far superior to that of copper wires or radio waves.

60年代末在英國工作期間，高錕和一位同事在發(fā)現(xiàn)當時使用的光纜受到玻璃質(zhì)材中雜質(zhì)的限制方面發(fā)揮了至關(guān)重要的作用。他們還概述了電纜存儲信息的潛在能力——遠遠優(yōu)于銅線或無線電波。

“The word ‘visionary’ is overused, but I think in the case of Charles Kao, it’s entirely appropriate because he really did see a world that was connected, by light, using the medium of optical fiber,” said John Dudley, a researcher in fiber optics based in France and a former president of the European Physical Society. “And I think society today owes him a great deal for that work.”

“‘遠見卓識’這個詞被過度使用，但我認為對于高錕，這個詞完全合適，因為他確實看到了一個以光纖為媒介、通過光來連接的世界，”現(xiàn)居法國的光纖研究者、歐洲物理學會(European Physical Society)前主席約翰·達德利(John Dudley)說。“我認為今天的社會拜他的工作所賜良多。”

In the early 1960s, light pulses carrying telephone and television signals could travel only about 20 meters, or about 65 feet, through glass fibers before nearly all the light dissipated. But by 1970, four years after Dr. Kao and the British engineer George Alfred Hockham published a landmark study on the subject, a group of researchers had produced an ultrapure optical fiber more than a half-mile long.

60年代初，移動電話和電視信號使用的光脈沖，通過玻璃纖維只能傳播約20米，之后幾乎所有光線就將耗盡。但到了1970年，在高錕和英國工程師喬治·阿爾弗雷德·霍克漢姆(George Alfred Hockham)發(fā)表關(guān)于這一主題的里程碑研究四年后，一組研究人員生產(chǎn)出超過半英里長的超純光纖。

Fiber optic cables, which look like fishing wire, later enabled the proliferation of broadband communications, biomedical informatics and countless other digital applications. When Dr. Kao shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences estimated that the optical cables in use worldwide, if unraveled, would equal a fiber more than 600 million miles long.

光纜看起來像是釣魚線，后來正是它令寬帶通信、生物醫(yī)學信息學和無數(shù)其他數(shù)字應(yīng)用技術(shù)得以普及。當高錕于2009年與他人一起獲得諾貝爾物理學獎時，據(jù)瑞典皇家科學院(Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences)估計，全球使用的光纜如果拆開，相當于一根超過6億英里(約合9.7億公里)長的光纖。

“It’s one of these things where, when you study technology, you start working on one thing, and the impact of it just fans out into all sorts of areas,” Dr. Dudley said by telephone.

“當你研究科技時，你開始研究的是一件事，然后它的影響會擴展到各種各樣的領(lǐng)域，光纜研究就是這樣的，”達德利在接受電話采訪時說。

He added that it might have taken decades for Dr. Kao to receive the Nobel Prize because the importance of his work was not apparent to the general public until the 2000s.

他還說，高錕過了幾十年的時間才獲得諾貝爾獎，可能是因為直到本世紀初，公眾才意識到其工作的重要性。

Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory, said in a statement on Sunday that Dr. Kao’s work on fiber optics had made a “tremendous contribution to Hong Kong, the world and mankind.” She added that he had also played a prominent role in shaping local higher education and scientific research.

中國半自治領(lǐng)土香港的首席行政長官林鄭月娥周日在一份聲明中表示，高錕的光纖研究工作“為香港、世界和人類作出了巨大貢獻”。她還說，他在塑造香港高等教育和科學研究方面也發(fā)揮了突出作用。

“An eminent figure, Professor Kao is the pride of Hong Kong people,” Ms. Lam said.

林鄭月娥表示：“高錕教授出類拔萃，是香港人的驕傲。”

Charles Kuen Kao was born in Shanghai on Nov. 4, 1933, to a wealthy family, according to an autobiographical sketch published by the Nobel Foundation. His father, Kao Chun Hsin, was a judge, and his grandfather, Kao Hsieh, had been a Confucian scholar active in a movement to bring down the Qing dynasty during the Chinese Revolution of 1911.

根據(jù)諾貝爾基金會發(fā)表的自傳概述，高錕于1933年11月4日出生于上海一個富裕的家庭。他的父親高君湘是一名法官，祖父高吹萬是一位儒家學者，在1911年中國推翻清王朝的辛亥革命運動期間非?；钴S。

Dr. Kao described his early life in Shanghai as “very pampered and protected.” His family moved to Hong Kong when he was 14, on the brink of China’s Communist Revolution of 1949, and at 19 he sailed to England to study electrical engineering at Woolwich Polytechnic, now known as the University of Greenwich.

高錕形容他在上海的早年生活“備受呵護”。他的家人在他14歲時移居香港，不久后1949年的中國共產(chǎn)主義革命就到來了，19歲時他乘船前往英國，在現(xiàn)稱格林尼治大學(University of Greenwich)的伍利奇理工學院(Woolwich Polytechnic)學習電氣工程。

Dr. Kao would later admit that he had not been the most diligent university student. “In those days the degrees were awarded as a First, Second, Pass or Fail,” he said. “As I spent more time on the tennis court than with my books, my degree was a Second.”

高錕后來承認他在大學里并不是最勤奮的學生。“那時候，成績分為一等、二等、及格或不及格，”他說。“因為我在網(wǎng)球場上花的時間比在讀書上花的時間多，所以我的成績是二等。”

After graduation, he joined a British subsidiary of International Telephone & Telegraph, and spent the next three decades working for the company in Britain, Europe and the United States. It was during his stint in England that he met his future wife, Gwen Wong, a fellow engineer who worked on an upper floor.

畢業(yè)后，他加入了英國國際電話電報公司(International Telephone & Telegraph)的子公司，并在接下來的30年里，為公司在英國、歐洲和美國工作。他在英格蘭工作期間遇到了未來的妻子黃美蕓，她是在他樓上工作的工程師同事。

In their landmark paper on fiber optics in 1966, “Dielectric-Fiber Surface Waveguides for Optical Frequencies,” Dr. Kao and Dr. Hockham noted in their conclusion that “a fiber of glassy material” and certain dimensions “represents a possible practical optical waveguide with important potential as a new form of communication medium.”

在他們1966年關(guān)于光纖的劃時代論文《光頻率介質(zhì)纖維表面波導》中，高錕和霍克漢姆在結(jié)論中指出，“一種玻璃質(zhì)材纖維”在某種特定規(guī)格下“作為一種新形式的傳播媒介具有很大的潛力”。

Dr. Kao received a half share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics; the other half was split between Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith, both affiliated with Bell Laboratories at the time. They had invented a semiconductor sensor known as the charge-coupled device, the device behind digital photos and film.

高錕與人分享了2009年諾貝爾物理學獎;獎項另一半由威拉德·S·博伊爾(Willard S. Boyle)和喬治·E·史密斯(George E. Smith)獲得，兩人當時都隸屬于貝爾實驗室(Bell Laboratories)。他們發(fā)明了一種稱為電荷耦合元件的半導體傳感器，也就是用于實現(xiàn)數(shù)碼照片和電影的設(shè)備。

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that the work by all three men had collectively “built the foundation to our modern information society.”

瑞典皇家科學院表示，這三個人的工作共同“為我們的現(xiàn)代信息社會奠定了基礎(chǔ)”。

Dr. Kao was knighted in 2010 and received an honorary degree from Princeton and many awards from engineering associations across the world. He was a professor and later vice chancellor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he founded the department of electronics in 1970.

高錕于2010年獲得爵士封號，并獲得了普林斯頓大學(Princeton)的榮譽學位以及來自世界各地工程協(xié)會的許多獎項。他曾在香港中文大學擔任教授，后擔任副校長，1970年他在那里創(chuàng)立了電子學系。

Dr. Kao is survived by his wife and two children, Amanda and Simon, who live in the United States, a spokeswoman for his Alzheimer’s foundation said.

高錕的阿爾茨海默癥基金會發(fā)言人說，他在世的親人包括妻子和兩個孩子——高明淇和高明漳，他們現(xiàn)居美國。

“As one of the last wishes of Professor Kao, our foundation will keep up our work in supporting people with Alzheimer’s disease and their families,” Mrs. Kao, the foundation’s chairwoman, said in a statement.

“作為高教授最后的愿望之一，我們的基金會將繼續(xù)支持阿爾茨海默病患者及其家人，”基金會主席高夫人在聲明中說。

Dr. Kao said in the autobiographical sketch that his scientific breakthrough had not resulted from a “eureka” moment but rather from years of trial-and-error experiments. “Transmission of light through glass is an old, old idea,” he wrote.

高錕在自傳草稿中說，他的科學突破不是來自“靈感突發(fā)”的時刻，而是來自多年的反復實驗。“通過玻璃傳輸光線是一個非常非常古老的想法，”他寫道。

In a 2004 interview with the IEEE History Center, he was similarly self-effacing.

在2004年接受IEEE歷史中心的采訪時，他同樣非常謙遜。

“I think it was a very respectable bit of detective work as well as good theory and good fundamentals,” he said of his contribution to the fiber optics field. “So there was really nothing spectacular.”

“我認為這很大程度上是一項探測工作，需要良好的理論和良好的基礎(chǔ)知識，”他談到自己對光纖領(lǐng)域的貢獻。“所以真的沒什么了不起的。”