Nobel Prize 2009: Kao, Boyle and Smith

Nobel Prize 2009 for Charles K. Kao "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication" and W. S. Boyle and G. E. Smith "for the invention of an imaging semiconductor circuit – the CCD sensor".

Charles K. Kao was born 1933 in Shanghai, China. He got his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering 1965 from Imperial College London, UK. He worked at Standard Telecommunication and Chinese University of Hong Kong. He retired in 1996.
Willard Sterling Boyle, was born 1924 in Amherst, NS, Canada. He got his Ph.D. in Physics 1950 from McGill University, QC, Canada. He was the executive Director of Communication Sciences Division, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, USA; he is retired since 1979.
George Elwood Smith, was born 1930 in White Plains, NY, USA. He got his Ph.D. in Physics 1959 from University of Chicago, IL, USA and also worked Bell Laboratories He got retired in 1986.

Why is their contribution so important? C. Kao has been awarded the Nobel Prize due to his prediction of the optical fiber. Thanks to his discovery, you are reading this! Optical fibers are widely used in communications; it allows information spreading almost at the speed of light.
Boyle and Smith invented the CCD (charged coupled device). Do you have a digital camera? If the answer is yes, thank Boyle and Smith! CCD sensors are sometimes called "the electronic eye". Without them, not only the digital camera would have taken a slower course, but also the images from telescopes or the way we analyze beams in optics.

To know more about their contribution to Physics (and particulary to Optics), I recommend you to download the digest with easy-reading information for the public about their work.

You can find more information about Nobel Laureates at http://nobelprize.org (you can even ask them a question!); a more detailed report (but still easy to understand) can be found here.