The Nobel laureate is known as the “father of fiber optic communications” for his work that led to the rapid growth of the internet.
Born on this day in 1933 in Shanghai, Kao studied electrical engineering in the U.K. and earned a PhD in the field in 1965. He later worked as an engineer at a research center for Standard Telephones & Cables, a British company, according to the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
In the 1960s, Kao discovered certain physical properties of glass that formed the foundation for high-speed data communication in the Information Age. He realized that bundles of thin fibers made from purified glass could carry large amounts of information over long distances and could replace copper wires for telecommunication, according to the Mayo Clinic journal. This discovery earned him a Nobel Prize in physics in 2009.
Kao founded the department of electrical engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1970 before moving to Roanoke, Virginia, in 1974.
In the U.S. he worked as chief scientist and later as director of engineering at ITT Corporation, the parent company of Standard Telephones & Cables. During this period, several important patents related to fiber-optic technology were filed.
In 1977, the first telephone network carried live signals through optical fibers and over the following years Kao oversaw the implementation of fiber-optic networks around the world.
The physicist later worked as an adjunct professor at Yale and as vice chancellor at Chinese University of Hong Kong before retiring in 1996.
By 2009, when the Nobel committee applauded his “groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication,” Kao was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease, which had been first diagnosed five years earlier.
In 2010, Gwen Kao, the physicist’s wife, launched the nonprofit Charles K. Kao Foundation for Alzheimer’s Disease, motivated by her first-hand experience of taking care of a loved one with the disease. The foundation raises awareness around dementia and supports people affected by it and their caregivers.
In addition to the Nobel prize—which was shared with Canadian physicist Willard S. Boyle and American scientist George E. Smith, the inventors of the charge-coupled device used to convert optical information to an electrical signal—Kao received the Faraday Medal in 1989, the Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1985, the Marconi Medal in 1985 as well as honorary degrees from universities around the world.
