Charles Townes, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist credited with the invention of the laser and its predecessor — the maser — died in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday.
Townes’ health had been rapidly deteriorating and he died on the way to the hospital, according to the University of California Berkeley, where he had taught physics since 1967.
Townes, who was 99, jointly won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to the field of lasers, sharing it with two Russian scientists.
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