2026 Charles Hard Townes Medal Winner
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Optica Names Yoshihisa Yamamoto the 2026 Charles Hard Townes Medal Recipient
Optica is pleased to announce that Yoshihisa Yamamoto, NTT Research Inc., USA, has been selected as the 2026 recipient of the Charles Hard Townes Medal. Yamamoto is honored for his influential work on networks of degenerate optical parametric oscillators, coherent Ising machines, and their applications.
Yamamoto is currently the Director of Physics & Informatics (PHI) Laboratories at NTT Research, Inc., in Sunnyvale, California. He is also Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics at Stanford University, and Professor Emeritus at the National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo. He received his BS from the Institute of Science Tokyo, and his MS and PhD from the University of Tokyo.
He pioneered the research of coherent optical communications and optical amplifier repeaters in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the late 1980s, he demonstrated squeezed-state generation in constant-current-driven semiconductor lasers and quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements using optical-fiber soliton collisions. Later, his research focus shifted to semiconductor cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum transport in mesoscopic systems. He developed microcavity quantum dots for indistinguishable single-photon generation, spin–photon entanglement, and violation of Bell’s inequality. Another major contribution during this period was the prediction and experimental demonstration of exciton–polariton condensation and superfluidity in semiconductor microcavities.
Yamamoto pioneered the research of a special-purpose optical computer, known as coherent Ising machines (CIM), designed to solve NP-hard Ising problems and related combinatorial optimization problems. The CIM concept was subsequently extended to coherent SAT solvers and coherent XY machines.
He is a Fellow of Optica, APS, and JSAP. His additional honors include the Achievement Award of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan, the Nishina Prize, the Carl Zeiss Award, the IEEE PS Quantum Electronics Award, the Matsuo Science Prize, the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from the Government of Japan, the Hermann Anton Haus Lecturer at MIT, the Okawa Prize, and the Willis E. Lamb Award.
Established in 1980, the Townes Medal recognizes an individual or group for outstanding experimental or theoretical work, discovery or invention in the field of quantum electronics. The medal honors Charles Hard Townes, whose pioneering contributions to masers and lasers led to the development of the field of quantum electronics. Bell Laboratories, Hewlett-Packard, The Perkin Fund and students and colleagues of Charles Townes endowed the award.
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Optica, Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is the society dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. Optica's renowned publications, meetings, online resources and in-person activities fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate scientific, technical and educational achievement.
Headshot Photo Credit: Stanford
