Obituaries
Bela Adalbert Lengyel, founding chair of the department
of physics and astronomy at
California State University, Northridge, and author of
the first published book on lasers, died
in an assisted
care facility in Irvine, California,
on 31 October 2002.
Lengyel was born 5 October 1910 in Budapest,
Hungary. He attended Pazmany
University (later renamed Roland Eötvös University)
in Budapest and, in 1933, obtained a teacher's certification in mathematics and physics for
secondary schools. In 1935, he received his PhD in
mathematics from the Pazmany University
in Budapest. He developed his thesis, which
contributed to the theory of
linear operators, essentially
independently, with only occasional guidance from John von Neumann, who was at
Princeton University but visited Budapest about twice a
year.
During 1935-36, Lengyel studied
mathematics at Harvard University with Marshall Stone. He also studied physics
there with Edwin Kemble and
helped with the writing of
Kemble's book, The Fundamental Principles of Quantum Mechanics,
With Elementary Applications (McGraw-Hill,
1937). Lengyel spent the following year in Hungary, where he worked on practical
problems in actuarial mathematics and statistical sampling theory with applications of those methods
to medicine. He then emigrated to the US and
taught mathematics at the Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute. He later held various
appointments at Brown University, City College of New York, and the University of Rochester.
In 1946, Lengyel left academia to become
a physicist at the Naval Research
Laboratory in Washington,
DC, where he worked on problems in
microwave optics and sonar. He moved
to California in 1952 and joined
Hughes Research Laboratories. The next 11 years at Hughes
were among the most productive of his scientific
career and climaxed in the
excitement of Theodore Maiman's development of the laser in
the spring of 1960.
Lengyel undertook the task of assimilating
the rapidly accumulating literature and began writing
his first monograph on lasers
in the spring
of 1962. By June, he had finished the first draft
of Lasers: Generation of Light
by Stimulated Emission, which was published six
months later (by Wiley). Even
though the book was a modest
volume of 125 pages, Lengyel became a celebrity because no other organized source of information
on the new
technology existed. Also, the book
was exceptionally well written; he had provided simple explanations that most physicists could follow. Typical of Lengyel, he acknowledged Kemble for teaching
him the craft
of scientific book writing.
When the swift development of the laser
field tended to make his
first book obsolete, he started on a second one
in 1963, followed by a third in
1971. His most important scientific contribution to the field
of lasers was the development
of a simple model of the
pulse process in the ruby
laser; he presented his findings at
the Third International Conference on Quantum Electronics
in Paris in 1963.
In the fall of that
year, Lengyel returned to academic life.
He was named chair of the
newly formed physics department at San Fernando Valley State College (later renamed California
State University, Northridge). As important as his
scientific contributions were, it was
his unsurpassed skill at fostering
an academic climate that won
him acclaim at CSUN. Lengyel was a theorist who deeply
appreciated that physics is an experimental
science. Through his commitment to honesty and
ethics in teaching and research,
he set the tone for the
department, a tone that has prevailed today. He firmly believed that if
students were not learning, then
professors needed to look to
themselves for the solution. I once complained that there was
not enough time to cover
all of the
essential physics during a semester. He answered simply, "You have to
work."
In 1964, Lengyel joined the Institute of
Quantum Chemistry of the University
of Uppsala, Sweden. He was a research associate and also served
as acting director of the
institute for four months during
his 14-month stay.
Lengyel remained chair at CSUN until 1970 and continued to
teach until he retired in 1977. He then served as
a consultant on lasers for numerous
high-tech firms in Orange County,
California, and was called on
as an expert
witness in the prolonged litigation
pertaining to the invention of
lasers.
A very serious individual, Lengyel nevertheless possessed a keen sense of humor. I am certain that,
in my presence,
he never used a pun and very rarely
used a cliché. He was a strict taskmaster,
intolerant of dereliction or malfeasance, yet was compassionate toward those in
need and tolerant of new
views and values. His reputation
as a no-nonsense administrator earned him the faculty's
intense respect.
I once asked him which he enjoyed
more--research, teaching, learning new areas
of physics, practical applications, or administration. He answered simply, "Yes." Those who knew him
only in the
professional sphere thought of him
as a scholar, teacher, and administrator
extraordinaire. Those who were closer
to him were
treated to a spirit who pursued
life in all
of its beauty.
He spoke four languages fluently and enjoyed gardening.
He was very busy, but made
time to swim,
ski, camp, hike, and travel
(he even went on a burro trip)
with his children and his
wife. He was a loving father and
husband. My own remembrance of Bela is encapsulated
in the Ralph
Waldo Emerson quote, "The purpose of life is not
to be happy. It is to be useful,
to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it
make some difference that you have lived
and lived well."
Barney Bales
California State University,
Northridge