OSA Announces Honorary Members

The Optical Society (OSA) has announced its 2017 Honorary Members.

The recipients are David Jeffrey Wineland, 2012 Physics Nobel Laureate at the University of Oregon, and Amnon Yariv at California Institute of Technology. The 2017 Honorable Members were approved unanimously by the OSA Board of Directors. Honorary membership is the most distinguished of all OSA Member categories and is awarded to individuals who have made unique, seminal contributions to the field of optics.

David Wineland (left) and Amnon Yariv (right) were elected as the 2017 Honorary Members of The Optical Society. Courtesy of OSA.

Wineland was elected for pioneering advances in optics, specifically laser cooling of ions together with unprecedented control of individual ions in foundational experiments of quantum optics and quantum information. Wineland was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physics. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 and his master's and doctoral degrees in physics from Harvard University. He completed his Ph.D. in 1970 and then performed postdoctoral research in Hans Dehmelt's group at the University of Washington, where he investigated electrons in ion traps. In 1975, he joined the National Bureau of Standards where he started the ion storage group. Wineland was the first to laser cool ions in 1978. In 1995, he created the first single-atom quantum logic gate and was the first to quantum teleport information in massive particles in 2004. One year later, in 2005, Wineland implemented the most precise atomic clock using quantum logic on a single aluminum ion.

Yariv was elected for pioneering scientific and engineering contributions to photonics and quantum electronics that have profoundly impacted lightwave communications and the field of optics as a whole. His research has focused on creating the mathematical tools and building blocks underpinning guided wave optics, the backbone of today's optoelectronic technologies. This endeavor led to the proposal and demonstration of the distributed feedback laser — the main light source and information carrier of internet traffic — and started the field of optoelectronic integrated circuits. Yariv received his bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. His work earned him a National Medal of Science, awarded by President Barack Obama in 2010. His current group research is centered on exploring, theoretically and experimentally, the quantum limits of coherence in lasers and applying the results to a range of new applications which include radar-like frequency-swept 3D imagers and new lasers for phase coherent optical communication.

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