Sir Charles Kao Kuen was an electrical engineer and physicist who specialized in fiber optics. He has a great contribution in the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications.
Charles Kao was born in Shanghai but 15 years later his family moved to Taiwan and then moved to British Hong Kong. There he studied electrical engineering at St. Joseph’s College.
In 1965, he came to London for higher studies in electrical engineering and completed his Ph.D. from the University of London. After completing his studies he worked at Standard Telephones and Cables (STC) Research Center of Standard Telecommunication Laboratories.
While working there for 6 years, he got an opportunity to work on fiber optics in communication. He discovered the method of digital data transfer with the help of lasers in glass fibers which has led to the evolution of the Internet today.
Technologies such as broadband and fiber optic communications exist today only because of Charles K. Kao’s inventions. So he is known as the “godfather of broadband”, the “father of fiber optics”, and the “father of fiber optic communications”.
In 2009, Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking research and development in fibers for optical communication.
This extraordinary scientist had dementia which reached the end stage in 2016. So Charles Kao’s health was getting worse day by day. He breathed his last on 23 September 2018 at the Bradbury Hospice Nursing Home in Hong Kong and left the world at the age of 84.
Charles K Kao Quotes :
Maybe it was the home tutoring, or the late start to formal schooling, or an overly cautious and protective upbringing, but in any case, I never became a talkative person. As an adult, I am not always comfortable in social gatherings with small talk. I must have inherited my father’s gentle nature. — Charles K. Kao
If you really look at it, I was trying to sell a dream … There was very little I could put in concrete to tell these people it was really real. — Charles K. Kao
My idea was too good to be true, which is why nobody thought that it would be possible in reality. Even I failed to express what I was thinking inside. — Charles K. Kao
I don’t know exactly why I am not good at expressing my feelings. But I am indeed an introvert. Now that I am a full-grown man, I still feel uncomfortable whenever I go to a party or somewhere like that. — Charles K. Kao
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