Takacs Named OSA Fellow

Peter Takacs, a physicist in the instrumentation division at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been named a fellow of the Optical Society (OSA).

Takacs is among the 96 OSA members who the society's board of directors selected to be part of the 2017 fellow class for their significant contributions to the advancement of optics and photonics. OSA highlights Takacs' "outstanding original contributions to grazing incidence optical metrology instrumentation, theory, practice and standards applied to x-ray optics for synchrotrons, free electron lasers and space instrumentation, setting the pace for major development over three decades."

With the exception of managing the metrology program for a chemical laser project at TRW Defense and Space Systems from 1982 to 1983, Takacs has been part of the instrumentation division at Brookhaven Lab since 1981. He first joined Brookhaven as a member of the biology department in 1979. Takacs is a fellow of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, where he has served on the education and conference program committees and as conference chair. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Rutgers University in 1969 and his doctorate in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1975.

"Working with some very smart people to design state-of-the-art optical systems in the early days of synchrotron science at Brookhaven Lab, I was able to recognize the need for improved synchrotron optics," Takacs said. "Because Brookhaven was not in the business of fabricating mirrors, I channeled my efforts into developing metrology instrumentation that allowed manufacturers to improve their polishing techniques and produce useful optical components for us. This was a textbook example of the old adage ‘If you can't measure it, you can't make it.’"

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the DOE. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States.