Dr. Townes was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who held professorial positions at Columbia University, M.I.T., and – for the bulk of his career – at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Nobel for his work in inventing the MASER in 1964.
In the 1990s, Townes changed the mindset of SETI scientists by suggesting an alternative to the radio searches that had dominated the field until that time. He proposed an alternative scheme to use mirror and lens telescopes to look for flashing lights (optical SETI), a scheme that until that time was considered far less attractive. Townes pointed out that when used with some inexpensive optics, lasers could be easily focused into very narrow beams, thus mitigating the increased energy cost of light photons.
For this insight, as well as his service as a member of the SETI Institute’s Board of Trustees, in 2002 Charlie Townes became the second person to be honored with the Frank Drake Award. He died in 2015.