James J. Wynne

James J. Wynne
Born	(1943-03-19)March 19, 1943 Brooklyn, New York
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard University,B.A. 1964, PhD 1969
Awards	Induction to National Inventors Hall of Fame, 2002 R.W. Wood Prize, 2004 Russ Prize, 2013 Member of National Academy of Engineering, 2015
Scientific career
Fields	Physics

James J. Wynne (born March 19 1943 in Brooklyn) is an American physicist at IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.

Wynne pioneered the use of excimer lasers for medical applications, most notably LASIK. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation on Feb 2, 2013 from U.S. President Obama, together with Rangaswamy Srinivasan and (posthumously) Samuel Blum for their contributions to laser eye surgery.

Wynne studied at Harvard University receiving the bachelor's degree in 1964, master's degree in 1965 and his doctorate in applied physics in 1969. He then joined IBM Research, first at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory and then at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. His research has been in nonlinear optics of semiconductors and insulators, nonlinear spectroscopy of atomic and molecular vapors physics of Clusters, using the laser to etch and in medicine (e.g., fluorescence studies of tissue).

In 1981, with Rangaswamy Srinivasan and Samuel E. Blum at IBM, he pioneered the use of excimer lasers in surgery. Based on an early experiment in which an excimer laser was able to make clean cuts in dead cartilage from a Thanksgiving turkey, without thermal damage, , they recognized the potential for surgery, and Srinivasan later developed on this basis, with Bodil Braren and Stephen Trokel, applications to eye surgery in the form of photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) and LASIK. Wynne himself worked on applications in dermatology with doctors at New York University Medical School (1985). .

He was Manager for nonlinear spectroscopy, laser physics and chemistry and biology and molecular physics at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Center and the Zurich research center.

Wynne was a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago, the University of Rochester, the Dartmouth College and Johns Hopkins University.

He is now responsible for education outreach at IBM Thomas J. Watson Center. He also conducts research on the development of intelligent scalpels with excimer lasers for the removal of necrotic skin from burn injuries.

In 2004 he received the R. W. Wood Prize, 2010. Rank Prize in Optoelectronics and 2013, the Russ Prize of the National Academy of Engineering. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for 2011. 1990 he was awarded the IBM Outstanding Innovation Award. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the IEEE and Optical Society of America (OSA). He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. He was co-founder of the Forum for Education of APS and APS was in committee for education and also in the OSA. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

1982/83 he was co-editor of the Journal of the Optical Society of America.

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