James Roy Taylor (born 1949) is an English physicist who is

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of ultrafast physics and technology at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

Education

Taylor was educated at

Queen's University Belfast The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast (; abbreviated Queen's or QUB), is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as part of ...

, where he was awarded a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

in 1971 followed by a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

laser physics Laser science or laser physics is a branch of optics that describes the theory and practice of lasers. Laser science is principally concerned with quantum electronics, laser construction, optical cavity design, the physics of producing a po ...

in 1974 for research supervised by Daniel Joseph Bradley.

Research and career

Taylor is widely acknowledged for his influential basic research on and development of diverse

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word ''laser'' originated as an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radi ...

systems and their application. He has contributed extensively to advances in

picosecond A picosecond (abbreviated as ps) is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10−12 or (one trillionth) of a second. That is one trillionth, or one millionth of one millionth of a second, or 0.000 000 000 ...

and

femtosecond A femtosecond is a unit of time in the International System of Units (SI) equal to 10 or of a second; that is, one quadrillionth, or one millionth of one billionth, of a second. A femtosecond is to a second, as a second is to approximately 31.6 ...

dye laser A dye laser is a laser that uses an organic dye as the lasing medium, usually as a liquid solution. Compared to gases and most solid state lasing media, a dye can usually be used for a much wider range of wavelengths, often spanning 50 to 100 n ...

technology, compact diode-laser and fibre-laser-pumped vibronic lasers and their wide-ranging application to fundamental studies, such as time resolved photophysics of resonant energy transfer and relaxation pathways of biological probes and

organic field-effect transistor An organic field-effect transistor (OFET) is a field-effect transistor using an organic semiconductor in its channel. OFETs can be prepared either by vacuum evaporation of small molecules, by Polymer solution casting, solution-casting of polymer ...

s. Taylor is particularly noted for his fundamental studies of ultrafast

nonlinear optics Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in Nonlinearity, nonlinear media, that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity ...

in fibres, with emphasis on

solitons In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a nonlinear, self-reinforcing, localized wave packet that is , in that it preserves its shape while propagating freely, at constant velocity, and recovers it even after collisions with other such locali ...

, their amplification, the role of noise and self-effects, such as Raman gain. Through his integration of seeded, high-power fibre amplifiers and passive fibre he has demonstrated far-reaching versatility in pulse duration, repetition rate and spectral coverage. He contributed extensively to the development of high power

supercontinuum In optics, a supercontinuum is formed when a collection of nonlinear processes act together upon a pump beam in order to cause severe spectral broadening of the original pump beam, for example using a microstructured optical fiber. The result is ...

or “white light” sources, which have been a scientific and commercial success.

Awards and honours

Taylor's work has been recognized by the

Ernst Abbe Ernst Karl Abbe (23 January 1840 – 14 January 1905) was a German businessman, optical engineer, physicist, and social reformer. Together with Otto Schott and Carl Zeiss, he developed numerous optical instruments. He was also a co-owner of Ca ...

Award of the

Carl Zeiss Foundation The Carl-Zeiss-Stiftung (Carl Zeiss Foundation), legally located in Heidenheim an der Brenz and Jena, Germany, and with its administrative headquarters in Stuttgart, is the sole shareholder of the two companies Carl Zeiss AG and Schott AG. It wa ...

in 1990, the Young Medal and Prize of the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based not-for-profit learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, physics research, research and applied physics, application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide ...

(IOP) in 2007, the

Rumford Medal The Rumford Medal is an award bestowed by the Royal Society for "outstanding contributions in the field of physics". The award is named in honour of British scientist Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, who is noted for his works on thermody ...

from the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2012 and the

Faraday Medal and Prize The Michael Faraday Medal and Prize is a gold medal awarded annually by the Institute of Physics in experimental physics. The award is made "for outstanding and sustained contributions to experimental physics." The medal is accompanied by a pri ...

of the

in 2019. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, J. Roy 1949 births Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Academics of Imperial College London Alumni of Queen's University Belfast 20th-century physicists from Northern Ireland 21st-century physicists from Northern Ireland People from Carrickfergus Scientists from County Antrim