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Michael Thornton
Medal of Honor
Thomas Norris: As a result of my injuries I was in the hospital for quite a long period of time. I was operated on for minor surgeries from 1972 through 1975, when I was retired from the military as a result of my injuries. And then I was in for minor surgery through 1978. So my life during that time was pretty much controlled by hospitalization and when I needed to be there for medical treatment. My spirits were very positive. I mean, you know, I was alive! It's just another offset in my physical stature, but you just learn to live with what you have. I mean, I had a very serious injury as Mike explained. A good portion of my head was blown away, which I had to deal with, and which would restrict me from doing some of the things that I would normally otherwise be able to do. But in the whole realm of things, when you look at the injury I received, compared to injuries I'd seen while you were overseas where you see devastation and people torn to pieces -- I mean, my injury was insignificant. I mean, it's just something that happened. Now that it happened, you know, let's make the best of it and get on with your life. So that's kind of the way I viewed it.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
Charles Townes: I listened very carefully to the reasoning that other people had of why it wouldn't work. And some of them had theoretical reasons why they believed it wouldn't work. Others practical reasons. I listened very carefully to that. And I looked at those reasons very carefully, and I convinced myself that, no, they had not really understood it fully. That I thought they were wrong. But I examined it very carefully. I kept examining myself and my own ideas, of course. Now some people agreed with me. But not a large number, and as I say, no one thought it was exciting enough to try to do it themselves. I had no competition at all. Interestingly, when the laser came along, and when I started talking about the laser, then everybody jumped in, and everybody wanted to do it. With the maser, it was really too new and different, and people didn't quite see the future of it. And after the maser was working, then it became the property of the field, the maser did. It became quite popular for a while. And then when Schawlow and I -- Arthur Schawlow and I -- wrote a paper about the laser, then that was exceedingly popular and everybody jumped in to try to make a laser. That was a very different kind of environment. But the really first ideas were not seized on by other people at all, and that's where the scientist has to be ready to be alone a bit.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
I didn't have very much money when I went to Cal Tech. I had been at Duke University before that, and I wanted to go to Cal Tech, which I felt at that time was the best place in physics during that period, as I believe it was. Oppenheimer was there, Millikan was there, and many other very well-known people. I could not, however, get a fellowship or any help at Cal Tech. Coming from a relatively small school, Furman University, and then at Duke, the competition was too fierce, and I just didn't get any help at Cal Tech. But I had saved up five hundred dollars and I decided, well, I'll take my five hundred dollars and I'll go to Cal Tech, and see how long I can last. And so I was rather abstemious when I got there. And I got together with another student who also didn't have any excess money, and we slept on this sleeping porch all the first year. And then, fortunately, Cal Tech gave me a teaching assistantship, which from then on allowed me to pay my expenses there.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
It's very important to be able to be wrong. That is, you want to be able to stand up against criticism, or people who differ with you. You want to be able to take chances. You also want to be able to recognize when you're wrong. And you're going to be wrong some of the time, and it doesn't hurt a scientist to be wrong, especially if he can recognize it. If he recognizes it first, that's great. If somebody else recognizes he's wrong and proves it to him, well then okay, you accept that. Yes, I was wrong. And so you go on and do something else. It's the sorting out of what's right and what isn't right, we do it all the time. And sure, we're wrong some of the time and we're right some of the time. But the fact that we can sort that out and decide is what's great about science. So you can continue to build on what is right, and when that's tested by other people, you may have to stand up against the community for some time, but eventually, other people will be able to decide whether you're right or wrong. Doing experiments and showing it, for one thing. Or doing the experiment and finding out it doesn't work. Then you know. You don't want to waste too much time on being wrong, you want to say, "Well all right, I was wrong, and what did I learn from that?" And go on and find a better way of doing things.
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Charles Townes
Inventor of the Maser & Laser
I've made plenty of mistakes, I've had setbacks, made mistakes in that sense. I don't consider them setbacks. If I work for a while on something, and find out that my idea wasn't right, well okay. It's not exactly a setback, I've explored that path. Down that particular path doesn't lead anywhere, and so I've done something. To me it doesn't seem like a setback. It's a mistake, you might say. So I go off some other way, so it's certainly not painful. But I've done plenty of things that aren't right that I find out about, made missteps. The idea is to try to figure out the best thing to do, but stay self-critical. As soon as you find you're wrong, backtrack and do something else.
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