"Father of optical fiber" golden Wedding gift: idiot A dream of the world

21st century Economic Report Yang Birch Silicon Valley Report "Hello?" This is m.y. Huang.　　"San Francisco Time, October 7 afternoon 12:25, after countless busy times, the reporter dialed Charles kao home phone."　　Answering the phone is the wife, 75-Year-old Gwen, who has been with Charles Kao for 50 years. A day before 3 o'clock in the morning, also in front of this telephone, the sleeping Gwen was awakened by a ringing bell. A secretary at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences told her on the phone: "Mr. Charles Kao has won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics." "Charles Kuen Kao, 76 years old, is the seventh Nobel Prize-winning Chinese scientist after Chen Ning Chen, Lee, Ting, Lee, Steven Chu and Cui, and the first person to receive the Nobel Prize for Physics in Applied physics.　　Previously, the Nobel Prize was focused on the achievements of the basic research field. Emails and telephones from all over the world are pouring into the high house.　　Overwhelmed, the GAO's husband and wife tried to decline the interview.　　Finally, with "from Mr. Gao's hometown of Shanghai, China" background, this reporter's interview request was accepted.　　San Francisco time October 9 afternoon, when the reporter drove to the Bay Area Kings view of a town house, a red sweatshirt Charles Kao smiling face. Although he is suffering from mild Alzheimer's disease and memory loss, Charles Kao is always smiling, unable to find the expression, nor a hint of frustration. He showed this reporter two beloved objects: one was the "fiber model" of the year, and the other was a "plush dress" made by hand during his leisure years.　　Now, the pink "plush dress" is the bottom of a flowerpot on the table, full of warmth. 43 years ago, Charles Kao, who served in the British International Telephone and Telegraph company system, published a paper, "optical frequency dielectric fiber surface waveguide", and proposed a "glass to replace copper wire transmission signal" bold idea. After that, the world's first optical fiber was born. Fiber-optic networks enable data transfer to be done from the fingertips.　　Today's mobile communications, international telephone, cable television and internet transmission operation, thanks to the fiber. "The Nobel Prize rarely honors the achievements of applied Science. I never thought I would win the prize, I was very surprised. Earlier, Gao had responded to the award through the vice president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong: "It also relies on the advent of optical fibres, which have been in an instant."　　"Idiot" A Dream of the world Charles Kao, foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, academician of the Taiwan Central Research Institute, was born in Shanghai, studying in Hong Kong, further study in the UK. When Charles Kao joined the Standard Telecommunication Research Laboratory of British Standard Telephone and telegraph company in 1960, the research institutes had noted the public's strong demand for improved communication facilities.　　At the time, Charles Kao's work focused on the research and development of a millimeter-wavelength microwave transmission communication system to improve the communication equipment's information transmission capacity by 50%. 3 years later, believe that they have fully understood the technology after the high start to improve microwave point-to-point transmissionImpatient with the slow pace of the system and the restrictions he faced, he decided to change his working environment and get an offer from a Millans college.　　But his resignation prompted a strong reaction from the standard Telecommunications Research Laboratory.　　To keep Charles Kao, the lab sent a lawyer to pay for Charles Kao to go to see the new house and cancel the sale and purchase agreement, arrange his resignation with Charles Kao's new employer, and offer to pay for all the expenses they spent on Charles Kao, or even to arrange a job for Gwen.　　Under Kindness, Charles Kao stayed and began to study how to use fiberglass to transmit laser pulses, hoping to replace the traditional communications technology that uses metal cables to output electrical pulses.　　In 1966, Charles Kao and his team published a paper, "optical frequency dielectric fiber surface waveguide", and proposed a more fiber-optic fibers than hair to replace the bulky Chiba copper wire for transmission capacity of nearly unlimited messages, transmission will be 10,000 times times higher than the traditional technology.　　As soon as this argument was published, it was ridiculed as "wishful thought", but Charles Kao did not give up. "[At that time] there seemed to be few of our peers in similar studies. The topic of our thesis did not cause much echo in the communication industry. "Charles Kao later recalled his own isolation in his autobiography," And I think we will be able to convince them to join us by directly handing out the main points of the paper to companies interested in this revolutionary method of communication. "Fiber is made of inexhaustible material in the world, that is--sand."　　"Charles Kao has emphasized to these companies the benefits of using sand as a material-environmental, low-cost, lightweight and highly resistant, and does not leak light. When studying how to implement the basic theory of "optical communication", Charles Kao's main problem is: How to remove the iron ions contained in glass?　　Because iron ions absorb and scatter light, the optical communication is difficult to put into practice.　　Later, he found a glass refining process called "condensation quartz", which can extract "no impurities" glass. At that time, no one believed that there would be glass without impurities, and Charles Kao, like a preacher, was selling his beliefs everywhere, so far away to Bell Labs in Japan, Germany and the United States.　　Finally, in 1981, Corning Glass factory in the United States made a breakthrough in technology, the theory of Charles Kao said the fiber was born.　　All life has been radically changed.　　The great discovery and secret marriage Nobel Prize for Physics is also the "Golden Gift" of Charles Kao to his wife--few people in the world can come up with such gifts. In 2008, after Charles Kao suffered from Alzheimer's disease, Gwen took on all his living and became one of his most important partners in his career. The computer programs and slides of Charles Kao's lectures, including slides from the 1966 historical paper, were prepared and designed by his wife, who graduated from University of Charles Kao to the standard telephone and telegraph company and met with Gwen. In the almost exclusively of white colleagues found an oriental face, so that Charles Kao feel very cordial, he would like to come forward to greet with Huang, and has been hesitant. A few days later, to summon up the courage to go up fromI introduce. "The iceberg broke open and we met." Charles Kao wrote in his autobiography's first chapter, "Encounters." The friendship between the two people develops very quickly.　　When Kao was strongly opposed to her colleague's motorbike, he knew he was in love. "I said: ' You are not wearing a helmet, sitting in the back seat of a motorcycle, too dangerous." ' I believe I am but. She hugged the lad as if he were very affectionate.　　"Charles Kao wrote. Before marriage, Gwen put forward to do a test: We separate six months, do not meet to see if each other is still miss each other. Charles Kao strongly objected: "The laboratory should do the experiment, the marriage experiment can not do, I do not need to do." After that, the two people's union again met Huang opposition. According to Chinese custom, the elder brother must first marry a younger sister to get married, but at that time, Gwen Brothers still celibacy, even the girlfriend's shadow is not.　　Finally, Charles Kao and Gwen chose to elope-secretly married. "All over the horizon to find a bosom friend, no I alone leisurely line, youth companions good return to the native." The film "80 Days Around the World" theme song, the right way out of our marriage journey.　　After many years, Charles Kao summed it up in his autobiography.　　"The father of optics" is not a rich 1996, in honor of Charles Kao's achievements, the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has named the "3463" asteroid "Charles Kao Xing", discovered in December 1981. But since the patent for optical fiber inventions belongs to British companies, Charles Kao, who spawned the modern information industry, did not get a huge fortune.　　On the day of the Nobel Prize, the couple also said they planned to donate some of their bonuses to the Hong Kong St Society for the Elderly and the American Association for the Study of Alzheimer's disease.　　Charles Kao used great discoveries to compress the communication time of all mankind, but it has failed to shorten the long years of validating the value of the discovery-when the award came late 43 years after the publication of the paper, time has turned the wise, keen young talent into a mild Alzheimer's disease.　　Illness has reduced the memory of Charles Kao, when talking with this reporter, sometimes thinking still stay in the conversation with a media reporter in the front, go out to see a visitor, even did not realize oneself did not have shoes, "come back, Charles, Come", behind, came the high wife in the doorway anxious call. Since their children live and work in the Bay Area, Charles Kao and Gwen have moved to the valley of Mountain View this summer. For more than half a month, a Latino lad, Javier Hernandez, accompanied him for an hour-long outdoor walk near his home.　　These days, the family from Shanghai recognized the walk of Charles Kao, forward to congratulate. Hernandez See all onlookers, very puzzled, when learned that his weekly companion walk is this year's Nobel Prize winner, the lad was surprised: "Wow, great!" I feel completely different now. "" Obsessed with research, indifferent to fame and wealth, this is 2000 Charles Kao and Deng Xiaoping was selected as "Asian Man of the 20th century" by "Asia Newsweek" when, the magazine's comments on Charles Kao. Chen Tiuqiang, vice president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, was impressed by Charles Kao, a renowned scholar: "He came to the school and handed the check to the headmaster a few years ago when he learned about the school's fund-raising expansion." "Charles Kao, who served as president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 1987 to 1996, vigorously advocated the wind of free learning." His subordinates described him as a man who never loses his temper.　　Even if other people disagree with him, it is good to compliment others on the idea of dissent. "When I was growing up, dad never gave me and my sister pressure, but taught us to be human, to cultivate our manhood."　　"The son of Charles Kao, Gao Mingzhan, describes his father's way of education." For Charles Kao now, his contribution and influence on the world have long existed, and the Nobel Prize may not be important. In the short time spent together, the reporter saw is a hope and everyone to share the award-winning happy elderly. Name, benefit, right, color all have nothing to do with him, as always, he is an ordinary person, just like the Gaosing in the boundless night, ordinary and bright.