The University Archives is pleased to announce that it has acquired and processed the papers of Tony Siegman (1931–2011), professor of electrical engineering and laser pioneer.

The papers consist of administrative files, corrsespondence, subject files, teaching materials, publications, and early laser equipment, including a book he turned into a functioning laser!

Siegman played a seminal role in the development of lasers and wrote some of the definitive texts on them. He is the author of Microwave Solid-State Masers (1964), An Introduction to Lasers and Masers (1972) and Lasers (1986). The last book, at nearly 1,300 pages, became the standard reference in the field.

Siegman invented the unstable resonator, which allows high laser power together with high beam quality. He is also internationally recognized for his contributions to the theory and practice of laser mode-locking, a technique that is widely used both for generating intense and short laser pulses and for metrology.