Giants in History: Charles Kuen Kao

Charles Kuen Kao (Nov. 4, 1933 to Sept. 23, 2018) was an engineer who is regarded as the father of fibre optics. His work in the 1960s on long distance signal transmission using very pure glass fibres revolutionized telecommunications, enabling innovations such as the Internet. Kao shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 for this achievement. Born in Shanghai, he lived and worked in Hong Kong, the UK, Europe and the US, including at the Standard Telecommunications Laboratory and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.