“It’s quite interesting to note that Townes’s colleagues at Columbia were skeptical of his idea. Niels Bohr, one of the great quantum physicists, and Nobel laureate Isadore Rabi, head of the university’s physics department, told Townes his maser idea would never work and urged him to abandon the project.”

“It’s quite interesting to note that Townes’s colleagues at Columbia were skeptical of his idea. Niels Bohr, one of the great quantum physicists, and Nobel laureate Isadore Rabi, head of the university’s physics department, told Townes his maser idea would never work and urged him to abandon the project.”

— James Scott Bell