Charles K. Kao: IEEE Life Fellow (1979) and Nobel Prize in Physics (2009): Two Lectures, Given from Galileo Galilei's Podium [Historical Corner]

The winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics were three Fellows of the IEEE: Charles K. Kao, Willard S. Boyle, and George Smith. The first was selected because of the development of optical-fiber telecommunications; the latter two people, for their contributions to digital photography. The official motivations for awarding the prizes were "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication" for Kao (one-half of the prize), and "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit: the CCD sensor" for Boyle and Smith (one-quarter of the prize, each). The Nobel Prize site reports a large amount of information, including the three lectures, as well as interviews and additional information. In the following, after a short biographical note, we present two papers. Respectively, these are the official lectio magistralis (Section 3) and a contribution to a subsequent symposium (Section 4), given by C. K. Kao at the University of Padova, Italy, in 1996 (Figure 1). These were given when he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree (Laurea honoris causa) in Telecommunication Engineering. A remarkable coincidence makes it particularly meaningful and attractive to now reproduce these two papers. Indeed, the announcement of the 2009 Nobel Prize arrived while the University of Padova, and the whole scientific community, were ready to celebrate the 400th anniversary of one of the main milestones in modern science: the discovery of Jupiter's moons by Galileo Galilei, in Padova, in January 1610. The Main Hall of the University of Padova (shown in Figure 2) is named after Galileo, who taught there for 18 years (1592-1610), before returning to his native Tuscany. We can indeed say that the pictures included in these papers show Charles Kao on Galileo's podium.