Dennis Gabor
Gabor, Dennis (1900-1979) was a Hungarian-born British electrical engineer and physicist who received the 1971 Nobel Prize in physics for his invention of holography, a method of making three-dimensional images, usually on a photographic plate or another light-sensitive material.
Gabor was born in Budapest, Hungary, on June 5, 1900. His father inspired him with stories about Thomas Alva Edison and other inventors, and Gabor became fascinated with physics at the age of 15. He and his brother built a laboratory at home and experimented with wireless X rays and radioactivity. He received his education first at the technical university in Budapest and then at the Technical College in Berlin, from which he received a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1927. He then accepted a position as a research engineer in the physics laboratory of Siemens and Halske in Berlin, where he remained until he fled Nazi Germany for Britain in 1933. While at Siemens and Halske, Gabor invented the high-pressure quartz mercury lamp now used in millions of street lamps.
Once in England, Gabor had difficulty finding work but eventually found a job as a research engineer with the British Thomson-Houston Company in Rugby. At that time, he became a British citizen. In 1949, he joined the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London and became professor of applied electron physics. He stayed there until his retirement in 1967. While there, Gabor worked on many projects in addition to holography. Over his lifetime, he obtained more than 100 patents for inventions. He also wrote books, including The Mature Society (1972), that voiced his belief that a mismatch had developed between technology and our social institutions and that inventive minds ought to consider social inventions as their first priority.
After his retirement, Gabor remained connected with Imperial College as a senior fellow and became staff scientist of CBS Laboratories in Stamford, Connecticut.