Charles K. Kao was a noted electrical engineer and a physicist, who developed the use of fiber optics in telecommunications. Raised in Hong Kong, at that time under British rule, he moved to England after matriculation. There he studied Electrical Engineering, eventually joining Standard Telephones & Cables. Later, he was moved to STC’s research laboratory, where his task was to investigate fiber attenuation. Very quickly, he realized that light loss in fibers was caused by impurities in it. Over the time, he created various techniques to merge glass fibers with lasers so that digital data could be transmitted without much loss, thus laying the groundwork for the evolution of the Internet. For this discovery, he was not only called the ‘Godfather of Broadband’, but also received numerous awards and honors, including the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. At the time of his death in Hong Kong, he held dual citizenship of UK and USA.
