On November 4, the 88th anniversary of the birth of "Father of Optical Fiber" Gao Kun, pay tribute to the great man in science!

In today's world, a wave of informatization characterized by digitization, networking, and intelligence is booming. The frontiers of meta-universe, cloud infrastructure, and 5G have become the outlet for the development of information technology. As the main carrier of information transmission, optical fiber can be described as the "nerve" of social informatization and an important cornerstone for mankind to enter the era of informatization.

Today is the birth anniversary of Gao Kun, the father of optical fiber, who used optical fiber to connect the entire world, laying the foundation for today's rapid development of the Internet.

In order to thank Gao Kun for his contribution to information technology, Google will use a graffiti on Thursday to commemorate his 88th birthday.

Draught does not forget the digger, mourning the father of optical fiber! Tribute to the great man of science!

Wonderful life

On November 4, 1933, Gao Kun was born in Jinshan, Shanghai. He has shown the characteristics of an inventor since he was a child, making fireworks, clay bombs, and radios. Later, he went to the UK to study electrical engineering. After obtaining a bachelor's degree, Gao Kun went to work in the Standard Telecommunications Laboratory in Harlow, UK, while continuing to study for a PhD in electrical engineering.

In the 1960s, network transmission was valued by telecommunication engineers. After countless experiments, engineers found that a large amount of light is absorbed by the glass, and the light will be seriously attenuated in the glass. The propagation loss is too large, and the optical fiber cannot realize long-distance communication at all.

But Gao Kun did not give up. In July 1966, Gao Kun published a landmark paper "Dielectric-Fiber Surface Waveguide for Optical Frequency". This article analyzes the main causes of optical fiber transmission loss, shows that it is possible to transmit optical signals over 100 kilometers (62 miles) on ultra-pure glass fibers, and proposes that such optical fibers can be used for communications.

His theory was questioned and ridiculed by academia and the industry, but soon, in 1970, Corning in the United States successfully produced 20dB/km optical fiber, and broke through the 20dB/km attenuation proposed by Gao Kun (20dB/km). km) checkpoint to prove the possibility of optical fiber as a communication medium. In 1971, the world's first 1 kilometer-long optical fiber came out, and the first optical fiber communication system was also put into use in 1981.

In 2009, more than 40 years after Gao Kun first proposed optical fiber communication, he finally won the Nobel Prize in Physics. However, in his later years, he had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and gradually forgot that he was the inventor of optical fiber...

In 2018, Gao Kun passed away at the age of 84.

US President Barack Obama once commented on him: Your research has completely changed the world and promoted the economic development of the United States and the world. I am proud of you. The world owes you a great favor.