Charles Kao, Nobel winner

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The Nobel Foundation said the work of all three of this year's physics laureates was groundbreaking. Without their research, modern communications technology including digital cameras and the internet might not exist.

Charles Kao was born in Shanghai but worked in Britain where in 1966 he developed the idea of transmitting light over long distances using optical glass fibres. Today these fibre cables carry much of the world's data and telephony traffic.

The other half of the prize has been shared between Willard Boyle and George Smith, who invented a device to capture images called a charge-coupled device or CCD. This has become the electronic eye of digital cameras and is used in many medical applications as well.

Willard Boyle explained how his invention had impacted him personally:

"I guess the most important part of our invention that affected me personally was when the Mars probe was on the surface of Mars and it used a camera like ours, and it would not have been possible without our invention. And we saw for the first time the surface of Mars.

I was sitting in my own little house and here I could move around on the surface of Mars and see the little stones there, and what it was all about. Very exciting."

The prizes will be awarded at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in 1896.

Glossary 詞匯表

physics laureates 物理獎得主
groundbreaking 突破性的
communications technology 通訊科技
transmitting 傳
optical glass fibres 光纖
data 數據
telephony traffic 電話流量
device 儀器
charge-coupled device電荷耦合器件
applications 應用
impacted 影響
probe 探測器
ceremony 儀式
anniversary 周年紀念