Arthur Leonard Schawlow was an American physicist. He is best remembered for his work on lasers, for which he shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nicolaas Bloembergen and Kai Siegbahn. His mother, Helen Mason, was from Canada and his father, Arthur Schawlow, was a Jewish immigrant from Latvia . When Arthur was three years old, they moved to Toronto, Canada. At the age of 16 he completed high school at Vaughan Road Academy and received a scholarship in science at the University of Toronto . After earning his undergraduate degree Schawlow continued in graduate school at the University... of Toronto which was interrupted due to World War II. At the end of the war he began work on his Ph.D at U of T with Professor Malcolm Crawford. He then took a postdoctoral position with Charles Townes at the physics department of Columbia University in the fall of 1949. In 1951 he married Aurelia Townes, younger sister to Charles Townes, and together they had three children; Arthur Jr., Helen, and Edith. Arthur Jr.
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