Gao Kun (1933～) Charles K.Kao. Physicist with dual British and American citizenship.
In 1949, he went to Hong Kong with his family. In 1954, he went to the University of London to study electrical engineering. He received a bachelor's degree in science from the University of London in 1957 and a doctorate in 1965. Since 1957, Kao Kun has been engaged in research on the application of optical fibers in the field of communications. In 1964, he proposed replacing electric current with light and using fiberglass instead of wires in the telephone network. In 1966, at the Standard Telephone Laboratory, he jointly proposed with He Kehan ??that optical fiber could be used as a communication medium. Kao Kun has obtained 28 patents in electromagnetic waveguides and ceramic science (including optical fiber manufacturing).
Due to his special contributions in the field of optical fiber, he won the Ballentine Medal, Liebman Award, Optoelectronics Award, etc., and is known as the "Father of Optical Fiber".
He served as an engineer at the Standard Telephone and Cable Company from 1957 to 1960, and as a director research engineer at the Standard Telecommunications Laboratory from 1960 to 1970. From 1970 to 1974, he worked in the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and later served as deputy manager of the Electro-Optical Products Department of the International Telephone and Telegraph Company. In October 1987, Kao Kun returned to Hong Kong from the UK and became the third president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. During his tenure from 1987 to 1996, he attracted a large number of talents to the Chinese University and made the academic structure and knowledge structure of the Chinese University more reasonable. In exchanges and cooperation with the mainland's scientific and technological circles, he advocated "step by step to make the relationship between the two parties practical."
Kao Kun was elected as a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1996. Due to his outstanding contribution, in 1996, the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences named an asteroid with the international number "3463" discovered on December 3, 1981 as "Gao Kun Star".
On October 6, 2009, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics would be awarded to the British Chinese scientist Kao Kun and the American scientists Willard Boyle and George Smith. The Royal Academy of Sciences said that Kao has made breakthrough achievements "in the transmission of light in fibers for optical communications." He will receive half of this year's physics prize, ***5 million Swedish kronor (about 70 million U.S. dollars).