The SETI Institute has awarded the
2002 Frank Drake Award for Innovation in SETI and Life in the
Universe Research to Charles H. Townes, Nobel Laureate and Emeritus
Professor of Physics at the University of California Berkeley.
Townes received the award for his visionary championing of optical
SETI, efforts that culminated in the formal adoption of optical
SETI as a search strategy endorsed by leading SETI scientists.

The prize consists of a cash stipend and a special award, and
will be presented at a ceremony in the spring of 2003. Townes
is the second recipient of the Drake Award, which was launched
in 2001 with a presentation ceremony honoring its namesake, Dr.
Frank Drake. Townes is the first honoree selected from a pool
of candidates whose submissions were solicited by the Institute.

Said Townes, “I am very happy to see multiple optical SETI
projects undertaken with the same rigor SETI scientists have applied
to radio searches. It was gratifying to participate in planning
sessions that led to today’s large-scale optical SETI searches,
and I am pleased by this recognition from the world’s leading
SETI research organization.”

The recipient of numerous awards and 25 honorary doctorate degrees
throughout his career, Townes’ principal scientific work is in
microwave spectroscopy, nuclear and molecular structure, quantum
electronics, radio astronomy and infrared astronomy. He holds
both the original patent for the maser, and (with Arthur Schawlow)
the original laser patent. In 1964, he received the Nobel Prize
in Physics for his work in quantum electronics, which led to the
construction of maser and laser oscillators and amplifiers.

Townes envisioned using the infrared and optical spectrum for
SETI in 1959 after reading a seminal paper in the journal Nature
in which Phillip Morrison and Giuseppi Cocconi theorized the possibility
of using radio waves to communicate across interstellar space.
Townes first proposed searching the optical spectrum for extraterrestrial
signals in 1961, one year after Drake’s Project Ozma, the
world’s first scientific SETI search of the radio spectrum.

Acknowledging that radio technology matured more quickly than
optical, Townes consistently maintained that other technologically
advanced civilizations could exploit the optical and infrared
spectrum for communications just as readily as the microwave spectrum.
In two later papers, one published in 1982 and another in 1993,
Townes compared the relative strengths and liabilities of optical
and radio SETI, concluding that both research methods should be
conducted.

By the late 1990s, laser technology had matured to the point
where sensitive and accurate searches in the optical spectrum
became practical. During a landmark 1997 panel convened by the
SETI Institute to chart the course of SETI research for the first
two decades of the 21st Century, Townes’ participation catalyzed
the thinking of the working group’s optical panel. Even
as the working group continued deliberations, SETI researchers
Paul Horowitz of Harvard and Dan Werthimer of the University of
California each initiated early optical SETI searches at their
institutions.

Today, following recommendations embedded in the report of the
working group (published by SETI Press under the title of SETI
2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
numerous scientific teams are mining optical data for SETI beacons.
One of these projects is funded by the SETI Institute, whose own
Frank Drake works closely with the project team that comprises
scientists from UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and Lick Observatory.
The SETI Institute also funded a study by UC Berkeley graduate
student Amy Raines to scrutinize data obtained by noted planet
hunter, Geoff Marcy.

Created in 2001, the Frank Drake Award for Innovation in SETI
and Life in the Universe Research honors distinguished contributors
to the scientific search for life beyond Earth. Awardees are chosen
by a panel of scientists appointed by the SETI Institute Board
of Trustees, and selection criteria considers both past contributions
and potential for future contributions of new knowledge to the
body of related scientific work. The Drake Award is supported
by generous contributions to the SETI Institute.

The SETI Institute is a 501c (3) non-profit California corporation,
incorporated in 1984. The mission of the SETI Institute is to
explore, understand, and explain the origin, nature, and prevalence
of life in the universe. The Center for SETI Research and the
Center for the Study of Life in the Universe comprise the two
key research foci of the Institute. Innovative education programs
and public outreach based upon the work of these two centers advance
the education component of the Institute’s mission.