Stephen E. Harris

Who is Stephen E. Harris?

Stephen E. Harris is the Kenneth and Barbara Oshman Professor of Engineering at Stanford University with appointments in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1959. During 1959-1960 he was a member of the technical staff at Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he worked on microwave masers. He studied at Stanford University, where he received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1963 and joined the faculty.

Professor Harris is known for his early work on spontaneous parametric emission, frequency conversion in metal vapors, invention of the tunable acousto-optic filter, techniques for lasers and nonlinear optics in the extreme ultraviolet, and for more recent contributions to lasing without inversion, electromagnetically induced transparency, and slow light.

He has received awards and honors including the 1978 David Sarnoff Award of the IEEE, the 1985 Charles Hard Townes Award of the OSA, the 1994 IEEE/LEOS Quantum Electronics Award, and the 1999 Frederic Ives Medal of the OSA. Professor Harris is a Fellow of the APS, the IEEE, and the OSA. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.