UK researcher wins Nobel Prize for fibre optics

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The "father of fibre optics" has been awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics for his research.

Charles K. Kao was awarded the prize alongside Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication."

Kao was born in China and works in both the US and the UK. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences reportedly credited his research in the UK during 1960s with allowing fibre optics transmissions to carry over longer distances, according to the BBC.

He studied at Imperial College London and worked at Standard Telephones and Cables labs in Harlow before they were bought out by Nortel Networks.

Boyle and Smith won their portions of the award for creating a digital sensor called a Charge-Coupled Device, leading to digital cameras among other technologies. Both are based in the US at Bell Laboratories.

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