OSA, IEEE Photonics Society award Evgeny M. Dianov with 2017 John Tyndall Award

The Optical Society (OSA; Washington, DC) and the IEEE Photonics Society (Piscataway, NJ) have awarded Professor Evgeny M. Dianov of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; Moscow, Russia) the 2017 John Tyndall Award. Dianov is being recognized "for pioneering leadership in optical fiber development and outstanding contributions to nonlinear fiber optics and optical fiber amplifiers." The award, one of the top honors in the fiber optics community, will be presented to Dianov during the plenary session of the 2017 Optical Fiber Conference (OFC), to take place March 19-23, 2017, in Los Angeles, CA.

Related: Bismuth-doped optical fibers: Advances in an active laser media

Dianov graduated from Moscow State University in 1960 and began his scientific career at the P. N. Lebedev Physics Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where he worked until 1983. He then worked in the General Physics Institute until 2006, and has worked with the Fiber Optics Research Center of RAS since 2006. His research interests include laser physics, nonlinear optics, and fiber optics, and he has published more than 700 scientific papers and patents. He received the 1974 State Prize of the Soviet Union for neodymium glass lasers and, in 1994, became a Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Since 1974, Dianov has been involved with most aspects of fiber optics, including fiber fabrication technologies, fiber measurements, nonlinear fiber optics, soliton propagation, fiber lasers, and optical amplifiers. The main results included new types of optical fibers, such as high-strength hermetically metal-coated, dispersion-decreasing, nitrogen-doped, and low-loss highly nonlinear fibers; new results in nonlinear fiber optics, such as the first observation of soliton self-frequency shift, the discovery of electrostriction mechanism of soliton interaction, generation of a train of fundamental solitons at high repetition rate, and the proposal and experimental confirmation of a photovoltaic model of second-harmonic generation in glass fibers; and the development of highly efficient Raman fiber lasers and optical amplifiers.

Dianov received the State Prize of the Russian Federation for infrared (IR) fibers in 1998 and the Vavilov Gold Medal for studies of nonlinear processes in optical fibers and the development of fiber sources of radiation in visible and near-IR spectral ranges based on nonlinear phenomena.

The John Tyndall Award is named for the 19th century scientist, who was the first to demonstrate the phenomenon of internal reflection. First presented in 1987, the Tyndall Award recognizes an individual who has made pioneering, highly significant, or continuing technical or leadership contributions to fiber optic technology. Corning (Corning, NY) endows the award, a prize check and a glass sculpture that represents the concept of total internal reflection. The award is co-sponsored by the OSA and the IEEE Photonics Society.

For more information, please visit www.osa.org and www.photonicssociety.org.