William T. Silfvast

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William Thomas Silfvast is an American physicist well known for his contributions to gas discharge lasers,^[1][2] soft x-ray lasers,^[3] and as the author of the influential textbook Laser Fundamentals.^[4] and also several thriller novels (see billsilfvast.com). Silfvast received his PhD in physics from the University of Utah and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. He then spent much of his career at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey, with a Guggenheim Fellowship at Stanford in 1982–83. Later he became a professor and chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Central Florida's Center for Research in Electro-Optics and Lasers (CREOL). Silfvast remains a Professor Emeritus at UCF, and is now retired and living in Oregon. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the IEEE.^[5] In 2010 Silfvast was selected as one of 27 'Laser Luminaries' (laser pioneers) during the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the discovery of the laser.