John Madey

Who is John Madey?

John M. J. Madey is a professor of Physics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, a former director of the Free Electron Laser Laboratory at Duke University, and formerly a tenured professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his development of the free electron laser at Stanford University in the 1970s.

Raised in Clark, New Jersey, Madey and his older brother Jules took an early interest in ham radio. In 1956, when John was 13 and Jules was 16, they began relaying communications from the south pole to families and friends in the United States. While an undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology, he had a discussion where the question came up as to whether or not it is was possible to enhance the transition rate for bremmsstrahlung through stimulated emission. Madey received a BS degree in Physics and a MS degree in Quantum Electronics from the California Institute of Technology in 1964 and 1965. He continued thinking about the stimulated emission question while working on his doctoral degree at Stanford, when he invented the free electron laser. He was awarded a PhD in 1970, and appointed as Professor of Electrical Engineering in 1986.