Orazio Svelto is emeritus professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano, where he was teaching for more than 45 years. For 25 years (1975-2000) he acted as Director of the Center for Quantum Electronics of the Italian National Research Council (now transformed into the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies).
The research performed by Dr. Svelto and coworkers has covered a wide range of activity in the field of Laser Physics and Photonics, starting from the early beginning (1961) of these disciplines. This activity includes ultrashort-pulse generation and applications, physics of laser resonators and techniques of mode selection, laser applications in biology and biomedicine, and physics of solid-state lasers. He is the inventor of super-gaussian mirrors for unstable resonators (1988), still often used in commercially available solid-state lasers. He is also the inventor of CW diode-pumped Yb:Er:glass laser, often used for eye-safe optical measurements and communications (1991). Lastly, and most importantly, he is also the inventor of the hollow-fiber compressor (1996) a milestone for many laboratories world-wide dealing with attosecond sciences. He is the author of the book “Principles of Lasers”, presently at its fifth edition (Springer, New York, 2010, 3,900 Google Scholar citations). In its various editions, the book has been translated in Russian, Chinese, Greek, Arabic and Farsi languages and it is widely used at several universities world wide. He served as a Program Chairman, Conference Chairman or Honorary Chairman at several international conferences.
He was the recipient of several awards including the Quantum Electronics Prize of the European Physical Society (1998) and the Charles H. Townes Award of the Optical Society of America (2005). He also performed expert work for the Nobel Committee of Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the year 2000.
