In Memory of Charles Kao Kuen

Abstract

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Charles Kao Kuen, the father of optical fiber, passed away on September 23, 2018, in Hong Kong, after battling Alzheimer's disease for years. He was 84. Known for his groundbreaking achievements involving the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication, Kao won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009, the Japan Prize in 1996, the Faraday Medal in 1989, and the Alexander Graham Bell Medal in 1985. Born in 1933 in Shanghai, his family left Shanghai when he was fourteen for Hong Kong in 1948. He studied at St. Joseph's College, a Catholic high school, for five years. He graduated in 1957 from Woolwich Polytechnic (now the University of Greenwich) in London with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering. He received his PhD in electrical engineering at the University College, London in 1965. Kao worked in the private sector at the ITT Corporation. In 1987 Kao became the vice-chancellor (equivalent to the president) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for nine years.