Gabor, Dennis 1900 - 1979

(9th June 1900 – 9th February 1979) Electrical Engineer and Humanist

Dennis Gabor was born Dénes Gábor on 5th June 1900 in Budapest. His mother was an actor and father was director of the Hungarian General Coalmines.

During the First World War, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army in Italy. Following the end of the conflict he attended the technical university in Budapest to study mechanical engineering. During his third year Technische Hochschule in Berlin where he attended mathematics seminars by Einstein. In 1924 he received his diploma and in 1927 he received his doctorate for his work that led to the first practical electron lens.

Between 1927 and 1933 he worked for Siemens and Halske in Berlin on gas discharge lamps and the applications of plasma but would leave following the rise of the Nazis. In 1934 he moved to Britain and initially worked for British Thompson-Houston. During the 1930s he would Anglaise his name to Dennis Gabor.

During the Second World War he would be prevented from working on war related projects due to his status as a registered alien but he would develop a moral code of scientists working on the war effort. In 1946 he became a British citizen and in the following year he invented holography but this required the later invention of laser to be fully utilised.

In 1949 he received the Mullard readership at Imperial College, London. 1956 would see him elected as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1958 he was appointed to a chair in applied electron physics at Imperial.

He would retire in 1967 and moved to Italy where he would spend his summers. In 1968 he received the Rutherford Medal and became a founder member of the Club of Rome, a group of individuals from science, industry, and the arts who were keen to explore ways to mitigate the world's problems relating to the use of natural resources, the environment, and economics. In 1972 he would publish ‘The Mature Society’, which advocated the growth of quality of life over materialistic developments.

Dennis Gabor died on 9th February 1979 in London.