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Was an American physicist. Townes worked on the theory and application of the maser, for which he obtained the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics associated with both maser and laser devices.
He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov.
He directed the US government's Science and Technology Advisory Committee for the Apollo lunar landing program.
After becoming a professor of the University of California at Berkeley in 1967, he began an astrophysical program that produced several important discoveries, for example, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Townes was religious and believed that science and religion are converging to provide a greater understanding of the nature and purpose of the universe.
Townes had steadily been active at the UCB campus, visiting and working regularly in the physics department or at the Space Sciences Laboratory past his 99th birthday and only a few months before his death.
Townes health began to decline, and he died at the age of 99 in Oakland, California, on route to the hospital on January 27, 2015.
"His strength was his curiosity and his unshakable optimism, based on his deep Christian spirituality."
