February 13th 2014: Mrs Frances Townes – 98th Birthday

Congratulations today to Frances Townes, wife of 72 years to Dr Charles Hard Townes, 1964 Physics Nobel Laureate and inventor of the concept of the laser, who is celebrating her 98^th birthday.

Dr Martin Richardson, director of the Townes Laser Institute at UCF, and his wife, Kathleen visited with Dr and Mrs Townes last week in Oakland California. In the photo, Dr Townes is wearing the lapel pin of the International Year of Light, declared by a resolution of the United Nations for 2015.

Dr Richardson established a Fellowship in the name of Frances Townes specially for female students in Optics who have demonstrated personal strength and dedication in rising above difficult and underprivileged upbringings in their education. An early advocate for women's rights, Frances Townes was an activist and organizer for the disenfranchised and "damaged homeless youth" in our society. She published her first book, entitled, “Misadventures of A Scientist's Wife”, in 2007.