Peter Pitirimovich Sorokin: Laser Pioneer Dedicated To Understanding, Creating, And Using Light

Peter Pitirimovich Sorokin, a renowned pioneer in laser science, passed away on September 24, 2015, from injuries suffered during a fall a month earlier. Peter, an IBM Fellow emeritus, devoted his career to understanding, creating, and using light. His 1966 discovery of laser action in organic dyes is extraordinarily significant. Dye lasers, with their continuous tunability over a broad spectral range, led to a revolution in optical spectroscopy and nonlinear optics. In laboratories throughout the world, dye lasers have been put to use in fundamental studies in physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine. The breadth and significance of this advance may be gauged by the scientific literature: a conservative estimate of the number of papers published, in which results are derived from the use of dye lasers, runs into the tens of thousands. For his discoveries, Peter was honored with the Franklin Institute’s Albert A. Michelson Award, the Optical Society of America’s R. W. Wood Prize, the National Academy of Sciences’ Cyrus B. Comstock Prize, the Technion’s Harvey Prize, and the American Physical Society’s Arthur Schawlow Prize in Laser Science. He was a Fellow of the …