Joseph Weber

From the New York Times, October 9, 2000:

An emeritus professor of physics and a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, Joseph Weber discovered the basic principle of what would come to be called masers and lasers and gave the first public talk ever on the subject in 1952. Soon after, he was the first to realize it might be possible to detect the minute distortions of space called gravitational waves that had been predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity, and Weber built the first detectors to search for them.

James Glanz, “Joseph Weber Dies at 81; A Pioneer in Laser Theory,” New York Times, October 9, 2000.