Richard Fork
Richard L. Fork was an American physicist.
Fork received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Principia College in 1957, and earned his doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began working for Bell Laboratories in 1962, and joined the faculty of Rensselaer Institute of Technology in 1990. Four years later, Fork left Rensselaer for the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Over the course of his career, Fork was granted fellowship of the American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. He retired in 2017 and died on May 16, 2018 of respiratory arrest in Huntsville.Achievements
Richard Fork has been very active in the field of generating light pulses with lasers.
- As early as 1964, he showed that locking the modes of a helium neon laser could produce picosecond pulses.
- In the early 80's he strongly contributed to the development of femtosecond lasers.
- In a second part of his career he focused his interest on the use of lasers for protecting Earth from asteroid impacts.
