Charles Hard Townes (July 28, 1915 – January 27, 2015) was an American Nobel Prize-winning physicist and educator.
Townes is known for his work on the theory and application of the maser, on which he got the fundamental patent, and other work in quantum electronics connected with both maser and laser devices.
He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 with Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov. In 1982, Townes received the National Medal of Science, presented by President Ronald Reagan.
Townes was born in Greenville, South Carolina. Townes died at the age of 99 in Oakland, California, on January 27, 2015.