Editor’s note: A green laser lighted the early career
path of then-physics-graduate Eugene Arthurs, now CEO of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.Light from many sources continues to provide
him with inspiration and direction, Dr. Arthurs writes in this blog post
originally published in the International Year of Light blog,
www.light2015blog.org.
Looking back, my career path was not determined by some grand plan, but rather by the beauty of the light from an argon ion laser in our Applied Physics department at Queen’s University Belfast. It wasn’t the science that the laser was bought for, Raman spectroscopy, or an understanding of how the laser would change the world, that drew me.
At the time I was soon to graduate with a physics degree – the first in my family history to get a science degree – and was interviewing with a local branch of IBM where my love of mathematics might give me an edge and where I might find stimulating work in Northern Ireland.
But fate …
Looking back, my career path was not determined by some grand plan, but rather by the beauty of the light from an argon ion laser in our Applied Physics department at Queen’s University Belfast. It wasn’t the science that the laser was bought for, Raman spectroscopy, or an understanding of how the laser would change the world, that drew me.
At the time I was soon to graduate with a physics degree – the first in my family history to get a science degree – and was interviewing with a local branch of IBM where my love of mathematics might give me an edge and where I might find stimulating work in Northern Ireland.
But fate …