Michael Stephen Feld

Michael S. Feld (November 11, 1940 – April 10, 2010) was an American physicist, who was best known for his work on quantum optics, and medical applications of lasers.

Biography

Michael S. Feld received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of laser pioneer Ali Javan. He remained at MIT throughout his career, where he was a faculty member from 1968 until his death. He was the director of the George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory at MIT.

Feld was well known in the field of quantum optics for his first observation of optical superradiance. He is credited for the experimental demonstrations of cavity, cavity-suppressed spontaneous emission, and the experimental demonstration of the first single-atom laser. In the later part of his career, he turned his attention to the field of biomedical optics, where he developed methods for in-tissue spectroscopy and imaging. Feld also directed the Laser Biomedical Research Center at MIT, where he worked on fluorescence and Raman spectroscopy to measure in-vivo levels of biomarker molecules that assisted in the imaging of disease-causing microorganisms via endoscopy and optical tomography.

Feld strongly valued a scientific environment without ethnic or cultural prejudice, and many of his co-workers and Ph.D. students were from minority groups. Notably, he was the Ph.D. advisor of astronaut Ronald McNair, who died in the Challenger disaster.

Honors and awards Fellow, The Optical Society 2008 William F. Meggers Award in Spectroscopy