Charles K. Kao

Life & Legacy

Sir Charles Kuen Kao (November 4, 1933 – September 23, 2018) was a Hong Kong electrical engineer who contributed to the development and use of fibre optics in telecommunications. In the 1960s, Kao created various methods to combine glass fibres with lasers in order to transmit digital data, which laid the groundwork for the evolution of the Internet and the eventual creation of the World Wide Web.
Born in 1933 in Shanghai, Kao and his family settled in Hong Kong in 1949. He graduated from St. Joseph's College in Hong Kong in 1952 and went to London to study electrical engineering. In the 1960s, he worked at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, the research center of Standard Telephones and Cables (STC) in Harlow, and it was here in 1966 that he laid the groundwork for fibre optics in communication. Known as the "godfather of broadband," the "father of fibre optics," and the "father of fibre optic communications," he continued his work in Hong Kong at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in the United States at ITT (the parent corporation of STC) and Yale University.
In 2009, Kao was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics "for groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibres for optical communication." The following year, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II "for services to fibre-optic communications."
Kao was a permanent resident of Hong Kong, and a citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States.