Summary
William
Alexander (Alec) Gambling, after graduating from Bristol University, entered
Liverpool University in 1950, where he studied for a PhD and where he was later
appointed as a lecturer in electrical power engineering. A research fellowship at the University of
British Columbia followed. He returned
to the UK in 1957 to a lectureship in electronics at Southampton University. Alec Gambling’s research work to this point
had been entirely devoted to the study of hydrogen arc plasmas, but in
Southampton he turned to the study of masers and lasers and their use as a
carrier source in communications. In
1964, Alec Gambling suggested the use of optical fibres as a conducting medium
for light signals. Much research on the
composition and manufacture of glass fibres with low signal attenuation
followed. Alec’s team grew rapidly in
size and prominence owing to the technological developments it made in optical
communications, not only with the conducting medium but also optical devices
for amplifying and manipulating light signals. Alec Gambling’s role as a leader for his
diverse and ever-changing research group was a significant success factor. In 1989, the team was incorporated within the
newly formed Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University. Major advances made in Southampton included
the invention of the erbium-doped fibre amplifier and work on fibre lasers,
photonic crystals, and fibre gratings. This
institution is still today one of the foremost centres for optoelectronic
research. It owes much to the pioneering
work and exemplary leadership of Alec Gambling. In retirement he lived in Spain, where he died
in 2021.
Early life
William
Alexander (Alec) Gambling was born in Port Talbot, Glamorganshire on 11 October
1926, the son of George Alexander Gambling (1889−1975), sometime master tailor,
and his wife, Muriel (née Bray) (1904−1977). ‘Gambling’ is not a Welsh name, Alec’s
grandfather having arrived in South Wales in about 1875 from Devonport.
In the
aftermath of World War I, in which he served, George Alexander Gambling found
that economic circumstances in South Wales were difficult, with a lack of jobs
and depression in the coal and steel industries. This caused him, of necessity, to abandon his
trade and, with his wife, take any available employment to provide a household
income. Thus, Alec Gambling was born and
raised in straitened financial circumstances, which were later brought home to
him directly when he was mocked by other children for having to wear suitably
altered hand-me-downs from his father. This
humiliation awakened in the young Alec a desire to succeed both at school and
in life.
Alec
Gambling’s place of primary education was the Trefelin School in Port Talbot,
from where he took the Glamorgan County intermediate and secondary school
entrance examination, which he passed and entered the Port Talbot County
School, a selective grammar school, in 1938. He was a successful pupil, but before taking
the Higher Certificate examination, out of a feeling of responsibility to
contribute to the family’s finances, he accepted a job working with the
Forestry Commission. When the Higher
results were announced in 1944 he had performed well, gaining passes in Pure
and Applied Mathematics, Physics (with distinction) and Chemistry. Also, in May 1944, Alec Gambling sat the
entrance scholarship examination at University College Aberystwyth, in which he
was successful, being awarded the Mold Eisteddfod Scholarship. Although Alec was tempted to continue with his
employment, he decided instead to proceed to university, believing that it was
through education that he would fulfil his potential in life.
University of Bristol and National
Service
In late 1944,
at the age of 18, Alec Gambling entered the University of Bristol, on the east
side of the Severn Estuary, to study electrical engineering, possibly
preferring this institution over a university college in his country of birth
owing to its prestige as a centre of engineering excellence. University gave Alec the opportunity not only
to explore an academic subject in depth but also to indulge his typically Welsh
passion for playing rugby. But again, as
at grammar school, his sense of responsibility kicked in and he gave up sport
to concentrate on his academic work. He
graduated with first class honours in Electrical Engineering in 1947, garnering
both the Alfred Fry Prize (jointly) and the Institution of Electrical Engineers
(Southern Centre) Prize along the way.
Bristol
University also led to Alec meeting his future wife, Margaret Pooley, who was
studying botany there. She hailed from
Dorset, where her family kept chickens, ducks and rabbits, and grew their own
vegetables, a handy attribute in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Alec spent many holidays at the Pooley home.
After
graduation in 1947, Alec was invited to remain in the Bristol Engineering
Department. He was also offered
employment on a research project at the University of Cambridge, but this
latter prospect vanished when funding was suddenly withdrawn. The duty of National Service then called, and,
though this obligation could have been postponed, Alec decided to undertake his
service immediately. After basic
training at Maindy Barracks, Cardiff, where he passed out top of his draft, he
joined the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, achieving the rank of
staff sergeant.
University of Liverpool
In 1950, Alec
Gambling entered the University of Liverpool as a research student and two years
later he was appointed as a lecturer in electrical power engineering. Alec and Margaret were married in 1954. She had remained at Bristol for a further year
to undertake teacher training, and in 1952 was appointed to teach biology (and
hockey) at Waterloo Park School, Liverpool. Alec remained at the University of Liverpool
until 1955, researching hydrogen arc plasmas, publishing his first scientific
papers and earning a PhD. His thesis was entitled, ‘An investigation of the
high-pressure glow discharge’. Alec
Gambling’s daughter, Alison, has relayed a significant story from his time on
Merseyside. ‘Alec recalled that one of
the staff in the laboratory was often quiet, taciturn, unsmiling, never joining
in the younger chaps’ conversation, and appearing aloof and unfriendly. Puzzled, Alec made a point of trying to make
friends. Asking him why he never seemed
to smile, the reply came back: ‘Young
man, after you have seen what I have seen, you no longer can smile.’ The co-worker was Jewish, from Poland.’ It was experiences such as this that moulded
Alec Gambling’s internationalist outlook, which will emerge throughout this
account of his life.
University of British Columbia
After five
years at the University of Liverpool, Alec Gambling saw an advertisement for a
National Research Council fellowship at the University of British Columbia, in
the Canadian northwest. He applied for
and was appointed to this position. In
Canada he continued his research on electric arc discharges.
Towards the
end of his two-year stint in North America, Alec Gambling began to think about
his future direction in life and investigated job opportunities with major
industrial companies in the USA, including Bell Telephone Laboratories, the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and Thomas A. Edison Industries, which
resulted in several offers of employment. Significantly, he also applied for, and was
offered, a lectureship in electronics at the University of Southampton. The cable from Professor Eric Zeppler
confirming the available position, which is still in the possession of the
Gambling family, reads, ‘Offer appointment lecturer thirteen hundred please
wire acceptance’. Those were the days
when long distance communications were sent as electrical pulses, in Morse
Code, along copper wires. Extreme
brevity was an essential feature of such messages. This was a crucial moment in Alec Gambling’s
life. Should he continue with academic research, or should he take the
commercial dollar? It was not an easy
decision for Alec, then aged 31, married with a small child and standing on the
threshold of a major career bifurcation, as he explained to Edison: ‘After much
deliberation I have decided to continue in University-type research and have
accepted a post at the University of Southampton.’ As will be seen, Alec’s verdict would have
profound consequences for the future development of telecommunications.
University of Southampton
In October
1957, Alec Gambling, with his wife, Margaret, and their infant son, who had
been born in Canada, arrived in Southampton on the Cunard liner RMS Saxonia
from Montreal, to take on the role of lecturer in the Department of Electronics
at the University of Southampton. This
was one of the first such university departments in the world, having been
established in 1947 by Professor Eric Zeppler, a Jewish refugee, and this
significant event even predated Southampton’s achievement of full university
status in 1952.
At
Southampton, Alec Gambling experienced some difficulty in securing funding for
research on gas discharges, the subject that had occupied his attention since
1950. In marked contrast, funding was
available for work on microwave electronics, and his research interests turned
to masers (invented 1953) and, later, to lasers (invented 1960), devices that
use stimulated emission of radiation to amplify microwaves and light
respectively. This led to the
investigation by Alec Gambling of suitable media for conducting light and his
work on optical fibres of various compositions. He later described his change
of interests in the following terms.
“A question
which the author has frequently been asked is how the idea of taking up
research on optical fibres arose in the first place and whether it was an
accidental quirk of fate. The truth is
rather less romantic. After eight years
investigating hydrogen arc plasmas at the Universities of Liverpool and British
Columbia, I came to Southampton (and this really was a fortuitous accident but
that is another story) and became interested in active devices for pushing the
frontiers of electronic communication to even higher frequencies. A study of noise in the (then) conventional
backward-wave electron beam oscillator led on to the new semiconductor diode
parametric, and tunnel diode, oscillators. I also took an active interest in the construction
of the first ammonia maser oscillator in a parallel project in the Department
under D.J.E. Ingram (now Vice-Chancellor at the University of Kent). On the
departure of Dr. Ingram to a chair at Keele I collaborated with Dr. T.H.
Wilmshurst on the use of the ammonia maser as a 24 GHz amplifier for electron
spin resonance spectroscopy. Thus began a research programme on quantum
electronic devices which ultimately led to a separate research group being
formed”.
The Laser Research Group becomes the Optical
Fibre Group
The invention
of the laser caused much excitement for Alec Gambling because of its potential
use as a carrier source in communications. Visible light, being of shorter wavelength
than microwave radiation, increased the carrier frequency and bandwidth of a
conducting medium. A fortuitous donation
of £3750 allowed the employment of a research fellow, Dr Bob Smith, in 1961 to
collaborate with Alec Gambling on the development of lasers suitable for use in
communications, and this was quickly achieved using a ruby rod as the gain
medium, producing pulses of coherent red light of 694.3 nm wavelength. The grouping known as the Laser Research
Group, led by Alec Gambling, emerged in the Department of Electronics in 1961.
In 1963, Eric
Zeppler, the founder of the Department of Electronics at the University of
Southampton, retired and Alec Gambling and Dr Geoff Sims were the two internal
candidates in the frame to succeed Zeppler in the chair of electronics and as
head of department. Sims was chosen,
and, though he and Gambling remained on cordial and mutually respectful terms,
the decision seems to have unsettled Alec Gambling and he considered looking
for promotion to a chair elsewhere, though in the end he decided to remain in
Southampton. In 1964 a second chair of
electronics was created by his employer and this time Alec Gambling was
successful.
In the
mid-1960s, a second issue concerned Alec Gambling in his pursuit of using light
for transmitting messages. This was the
identification of a suitable transmission medium. It quickly became clear that line-of-sight
passage of a collimated light beam through the atmosphere would be of limited
utility owing to local variations in atmospheric conditions, and such a system
would likely be restricted to communication over distances of a few kilometres
at most. The next thought was to protect
the beam from degradation by confining it in a protective pipe, but to limit
scattering and absorption at the surface of the pipe it would have to be of
large diameter and, as far as possible, devoid of curves. Other ideas for improving on the protective
pipe idea were to line the pipe with a highly reflective material to reduce
absorption losses, to use evacuated tubes, and to incorporate weakly converging
lenses to concentrate the light beam. However,
to Alec Gambling and his colleagues such refinements to the tubular waveguide
principle were impractical for the design of a cost effective medium for
transmitting messages over long distances, and the Southampton group therefore
moved in a different direction.
An optical
fibre is a cylindrical, dielectric waveguide that transmits light along its
axis through the process of total internal reflection. At that stage in the early 1960s Alec Gambling
considered the use of glass fibres as the conducting medium. Unfortunately, the performance of then
state-of-the-art fibres from the point of view of light transmission was rather
poor as they would significantly attenuate the light over only a few
metres. Furthermore, the fibres were
rather fragile in use. Cladded glass
fibres, consisting of a transmitting core surrounded by a material of lower
refractive index, were already in use for the bundles of fibres employed in
medical endoscopes. This cladding
protected the core from degradation by exposure to the atmosphere and ensured
the maintenance of the evanescent field at the reflecting surface, but such
fibres also suffered rapid attenuation of passing light and were unsuitable for
telecommunications applications. It was
the work of Charles Kao (subsequently Sir Charles Kao, FRS, FRSE) in 1966 that
first demonstrated that silica glass might be a suitable carrier medium for
photons and proposed the use of glass fibres for communications.
By 1966, Alec
Gambling, keen to receive recognition for his published research work, sought
the advice of a member of the Bristol University professoriate on his prospects
for securing the award of the degree of DSc from his alma mater. He received the
caution that Bristol’s standards were very high, but, undaunted, he pressed on
with his submission. The higher
doctorate was awarded. In the same year,
the work of Alec Gambling and his collaborators on optical telecommunications
had aroused sufficient attention for the University of Southampton to dignify
Alec and his collaborators with the title ‘The Optical Fibre Group’ (OFG)
within the Electronics Department, though he said of this period that ‘there
was no hint of all the excitement to come’. Alec Gambling spent the academic year
1966−1967 on sabbatical leave at the University of Colorado and so was absent
from the OFG for the early phase of its work, which was theoretical.
With a
measure of optimism, later described by Gambling as ‘wild in the extreme’, he
discussed the potential of glass fibres for use in telecommunications as early
as 1964 at the British Association for the Advancement of Science annual
meeting, held that year in Southampton. Eventually,
in 1966, Alec Gambling obtained a government research contract to work with the
Signals Research and Development Establishment, based in Christchurch, Dorset,
UK, with the aim of creating a cheap, low bandwidth, optical fibre
communications system suitable for distances of several kilometres. By that year it had been shown that silica
(silicon dioxide)-based glass could be prepared to have sufficiently low
optical loss to be employed as a transmission medium for visible light. Peter Laybourn, FRSE, now Professor Emeritus
of Electronic Engineering, Glasgow University, was employed to pursue the work
on silica fibres, while electronic components of the system were investigated
in Christchurch, though the experimental studies could not begin until finance
became available in 1968.
The first
problem to be overcome in this new field of research was that no-one in the
Electronics Department had any knowledge about, nor experience of, fabricating
glass fibres. In an attempt to rectify
this deficiency, Alec Gambling approached a major glass company in the UK to
ask for help and advice. Unobligingly,
it provided neither, leaving Alec and his colleagues entirely dependent on
their general scientific wit and intuition.
Some years later, Alec wrote, ‘Whilst in the University group there was
considerable experience in microwave and laser techniques no-one had any
knowledge of glass, nor the faintest idea of how to make fibres.’ Their approach, therefore, was to control and
measure all parameters of the fabrication process precisely to gain an
understanding of which factors were important.
The design
and construction of the apparatus for controlling the conditions under which a
fibre was drawn from a heated billet of glass was entrusted to a new arrival in
the team, PhD student David (later Sir David) Payne, FRS, who was supervised by
Alec Gambling. Payne’s machine had a
vertical layout with two upright bars to which all components were clamped, the
whole structure being stable and vibration-free. The billet of glass to be melted and drawn
into a fibre was lowered at a controlled rate through a heating coil, where it
softened and was drawn out into a fibre; this was pulled at a controlled rate
to achieve the desired fibre diameter and fed onto a slowly rotating aluminium
drum which also traversed back and forth, allowing the fibre to accumulate as a
series of monolayers. Temperature
control was better than 0.1°C up to 1200°C and drawing speed accurate to 0.1%. This machine was so successful that it
remained in constant use until it was lost in a fire in 2005. Such was its significance that it had been
promised, on retirement, to the Science Museum in London.
With the
means available to draw fibres of constant characteristics, the next aim was to
examine production parameters to generate fibres that had reduced signal
attenuation. Equipment to measure loss
during transmission and by scattering in bulk glasses was set up by another PhD
student under Alec Gambling’s supervision, John Dakin (now Emeritus Professor
at the Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton). The scattering was shown to be elastic
(Rayleigh) in nature in high-quality, commercially available, optical glasses. These measurements were then transferred to
fibres drawn on Payne’s drawing tower, early fibres being derived from
commercially available Schott F7 glass rods encased with Chance Pilkington ME1
glass tubing. These fibres had an
attenuation of about 1000 dB km−1, but this rate of loss was
progressively reduced through experimentation to about 150 dB km−1,
about the same rate as in the starting, bulk glass. Another line of enquiry was directed at the
quantity of information (bandwidth) that these multi-mode fibres could
transmit. This was expected to be of the
order of 10−20 MHz over 1 km, but that value was soon increased to 1 GHz over
the same distance.
It is
important to emphasize at this stage that Alec Gambling was principally a
theoretician and team leader, rather than a laboratory-based experimentalist,
and that the remarkable advances being made by the Southampton OFG depended
greatly upon this combination of an insightful, politically well connected
leader and multiple capable laboratory workers (many from overseas), together
with suitable facilities and sufficient financial resources. This critical mass of personnel interacted
cooperatively so that, although most of the research students were formally
supervised by Alec Gambling, in practice individuals were receiving guidance
simultaneously from other team members. Alec
and Margaret Gambling also played a vital social role in melding together this
diverse group of researchers to form a coherent team through regular social
evenings held at their home. In this way
many life-long friendships were created. Their daughter, Alison, recently commented on
her memory of family life with the team.
“During the
early days of the OFG there was the most wonderful feeling of camaraderie and
teamwork. Difficulties were openly
discussed over coffees, and opinions on solutions openly shared. Alec was always approachable and on hand with
wise counsel. When in the office it
seemed that he worked tirelessly both to hold the group together and
importantly, to raise the funding required to take forward new ideas. He and Margaret always sought to make overseas
students and researchers welcome, regularly inviting them and their families to
their home or on outings, to foster a keen sense of belonging. Many of the students went on to have
incredibly successful careers either as entrepreneurs or as experts in
Optoelectronics”.
About the end
of 1970, the OFG, frustrated by the practical limitations of available
commercial glasses, began to collaborate with Harold Rawson, Professor of Glass
Technology at the University of Sheffield. Rawson’s group manufactured glass
preforms from a double-layered melt, which were then drawn into fibres in
Southampton, resulting in a fibre with reduced signal attenuation of about 50
dB km−1 and a numerical aperture of 0.4. However, Rawson’s group was only able to
provide limited quantities of experimental glass. An alternative configuration of hollow glass
fibres filled with hexachlorobutadiene, a stable but toxic liquid, achieved a
transmission loss of only 10 dB km−1. Although impractical for
commercial use, such a fibre was employed to carry the signal over 1 km for a
live colour TV broadcast demonstration by the BBC in 1973, the first such
transmission using an optical fibre.
Early members of the Optical Fibre Group (L-R: Alec Gambling, Peter Laybourn, David Payne, John Dakin, Hiro Matsumura and Harish Sunak
The 1960s had
seen the Southampton OFG operating in a limited market with few other competing
research teams, but the following decade was quite different, owing to the
widespread recognition of the potential of glass fibres for deployment in
telecommunications. These groups were
all seeking the holy grail of a cheap and efficient technique for manufacturing
silica fibres with good transmission characteristics. Fibres had been drawn elsewhere consisting of
a silica core coated with a borosilicate glass layer, and this technique was
repeated and modified in Southampton. In
1974 there was a major breakthrough involving a homogeneous vapour-phase
reaction inside a substrate tube, which resulted in fine particles of glass
being deposited on the inner surface; these particles were then incorporated
into a fused clear glass layer and the tube then collapsed to a solid rod. The
new core material consisted of phosphosilicate glass with a pure silica
cladding. The technique was cheap, and
the fibre had excellent transmission loss and scatter characteristics. This chemical vapour deposition technique
quickly became the method of choice for optical fibre manufacture throughout
the world. It was from that time that
optical fibres started to be deployed in telecommunications.
Early
research work at Southampton had concentrated on producing multi-mode fibres,
whereas groups elsewhere were working towards single-mode transmission. Single-mode fibres, with a core only about 10
μm in diameter, restrict transmission to one transverse mode, but as a result
they were considered difficult to join. This
caused other groups to turn their attention from single- to multi-mode fibres. But multi-mode fibres proved to have their
Achilles’ heel too: with a larger core they support multiple transverse modes,
leading to intermodal dispersion limiting transmission bandwidth, and several
techniques were examined to overcome this issue. At Southampton a new method - near-field
scanning - was devised to measure the
variation in core refractive index in multi-mode fibres. In consequence there was a realisation that
leaky modes also caused significant problems for the employment of multi-mode
fibres, which would be expensive to engineer out of fibres. In the mid-1970s, the Southampton group
therefore turned its attention to single-mode fibres, which were both easier
and cheaper to manufacture; less material had to be deposited, and slight
variations in refractive index along the fibre were of lesser significance than
with the multi-mode alternative. The OFG
was the only major research team at the time to make that switch of emphasis.
Initial
single-mode fibres were manufactured using the Modified Chemical Vapour
Deposition (MCVD) technique, by which doped silica particles, produced by the
oxidation of silicon tetrachloride and additives inside a substrate tube, were
deposited on the inner surface, followed by sintering and drawing into the
final, solid fibre. Losses induced by
bends in the fibre were found to be acceptable, and the problem of achieving
mechanical alignment for jointing also turned out to be practicable. Dispersion of the light pulse passing through
these single-mode fibres was examined and found to have two main causes:
material dispersion, owing to change in index with wavelength; and waveguide
dispersion, which is related to the geometry of the fibre core and local
cladding. Wavelength dispersion was
close to that of pure bulk silica when evaluated with a light pulse produced by
a gallium arsenide laser emitting light at a wavelength of 840 nm. The results produced by the OFG team showed
that material dispersion would fall to zero if light of 1300 nm wavelength was
employed. Also, at this longer
wavelength, attenuation was reduced from 2 to 0.4 dB km−1. This was a significant finding and led to the
search for light sources operating at the longer wavelength. Another significant finding was that the
dispersion components (material, mode and profile) could be made to add to zero
at a chosen wavelength between 1300 and 2000 nm. Further, attenuation is minimal at a
wavelength of 1550, being 0.2 dB km−1. Such single-mode fibres can
transmit light of this wavelength over distances of 200 km, and the rate of
transmission is only limited by the speed with which the light source can be
modulated.
By the
mid-1970s, the growing status of the OFG and especially its leader, Alec
Gambling, received major recognition when he was approached to take the chair
of engineering at Oxford University. Although
he gave serious consideration to this opportunity, Alec Gambling decided to
stay at Southampton for both family and professional reasons. The optical fibre research was making rapid
progress, he had an able and enthusiastic team of researchers to pursue his
ideas, and he had funding and facilities in which this work could continue. He decided not to risk losing momentum.
Alec was also
a director of York Ventures and Special Optical Products Ltd, a spin-out
company from the OFG, from 1980 to 1997.
The origin of the Optoelectronics
Research Centre
It was
perhaps inevitable that the OFG, the creation of Alec Gambling, with the
assistance of his assembled team of colleagues, visitors and research students
would generate technically and commercially significant discoveries. No development was more important than the erbium-doped
fibre amplifier (EDFA) invented by members of the OFG, first details of which were
published by Mears and colleagues in1986 and more specifically at the beginning
of 1987 by Mears and colleagues. Motivated by early reports from Southampton,
Emmanuel Desurvire, then a member of the technical staff at AT&T’s Bell
Laboratories, also initiated research on the EDFA and published his work in late
1987. Optical amplification of a light
signal without involving conversion to an electrical signal was not a new
concept in the mid-1980s. Erbium, a Rare Earth metal, is incorporated in
optical fibres usually as the Er3+ ion; when pumped with a laser to a higher
level of excitement from the ground state, emission of light at a different
wavelength occurs when stimulated by a transmitted light signal, resulting in
its amplification. In this way optical
signals can be passed many thousands of miles along optical fibres, simply by
the incorporation of EDFAs periodically, typically every 80−100 km. The significance of this invention for
telecommunications technology would be hard to exaggerate.
Alec Gambling photographed with a fibre preform glass deposition lathe
The rapid
development of optoelectronic technologies during the 1980s led to government
action in the UK to bolster national pre-eminence in this area. The Science and Engineering Research Council
(SERC) decided to set up interdisciplinary research centres, and one was
established concentrating on optoelectronic technologies, principally involving
the University of Southampton and University College London, but with
collaboration involving the universities of Oxford, Liverpool, Sussex and Kent.
The centre was named the Optoelectronics
Research Centre (ORC) and it was formally established in October 1989 with a
grant of £11.5 million to cover the first six years of its operations. Alec
Gambling was instrumental in negotiating the funding for this new development
and he was nominated as the founding director of this major research centre,
assisted by three deputy directors, each with a different area of responsibility.
They were Professor David Hanna, FRS, University of Southampton (Optical Physics),
Professor David Payne, FRS, University of Southampton (Optical Technology) and
Professor John Midwinter, FRS, University College, London (Optical Systems).
The
pre-eminence established by the Southampton OFG was reflected in the
institutional affiliations of the members of the directorate. Southampton University also, wisely,
supplemented the SERC finance by making a major contribution of seconded staff
(who were largely free of teaching duties), facilities and accommodation from
its own resources. It also gave the
centre a special status by placing it outside the faculty structure, with
direct access to the vice-chancellor. Over
the next few years, the ORC evolved from being an interdisciplinary research
centre with multi-institutional participation to becoming essentially a
Southampton initiative.
Optoelectronic
research is costly and the practical consequence of this truth was that, even
before the formation of the ORC, Alec Gambling spent much of his time liaising
with funding bodies to ensure that his colleagues had the wherewithal to pursue
their ideas. He was particularly
successful in attracting commercial funding, with major financial input coming
from industrial sponsors, such as British Telecom (BT) and Pirelli. As examples, the latter firm provided the
finance that allowed David Payne to continue as a research student and to
complete his PhD. Subsequently Pirelli
funded a readership for Payne and thereafter for Simon Poole and Richard Laming
in the ORC (Optoelectronics Research Centre, Southampton University). BT
sponsored Alec Gambling’s chair between 1980 and 1989.
Alec Gambling
had been appointed as director of the ORC on its inception in 1989. He remained in that role until 1995, when he
retired. Between 1986, when the EDFA was
invented at Southampton, and 1995 significant advances were made in several
areas of optoelectronic technology. During
the period of Alec’s tenure, work on fibre lasers by Mears and colleagues in
1985, photonic crystal fibres by Birks and colleagues in 1995, and Knight and
colleagues in 1996, and fibre gratings by Russell and colleagues in 1993, and Loh
and colleagues in 1996, was extensively pursued within the ORC, ultimately
leading to notable commercial successes.
In addition,
various other research areas were pursued, including novel soft glasses, such
as chalcogenide fibres, low phonon-energy glasses for efficient 1.3 μm optical
fibre amplifiers by Hewak in 1993, fibre sensing by Hartog and colleagues in
1985, birefringent optical fibres for sensors, solitons by Richardson and
colleagues in 1991, and poled, enhanced, non-linearity fibres by Kazansky and
colleagues in 1994.
Over his
working life, Alec Gambling published more than 250 articles in major
scientific journals, or in the proceedings of significant conferences. By the
1970s Alec Gambling had assumed the mantle of doyen of the optoelectronics
community, certainly in Britain and Europe and to some extent also in the Far
East. As early as 1964 he had speculated on the use of glass fibres for the
transmission of signals, and increasingly, from the 1970s to the end of the
century, he was a regular contributor of invited talks at conferences, review
papers and the likes, summarizing the current situation and speculating on
future directions of research and deployment of optical communications. Alec
also had concern for the education of engineers, especially with regard to the
new optoelectronic technologies. He was a member of the Engineering Industries
Training Board between 1985 and 1988 and a member of the National Advisory Body
for Local Authority Higher Education: Engineering Working Group between 1982
and 1984.
Alec Gambling pictured in his ORC office at Southampton University
After the Optoelectronics Research Centre
Retirement
did not signal the retreat of Alec Gambling from the forefront of
optoelectronic technology research. Rather,
it gave new impetus to both his curiosity and his internationalist leanings. He was no longer tied to wide responsibilities
within the ORC and externally in its relationships with government, industry
and the funding bodies, and he could indulge his own penchant for travel and
international collaboration. Between
1996 and 2001 he took the position of Royal Society Kan Tong Po Visiting Professor
and member of the International Advisory Centre at the City University of Hong
Kong, where he collaborated with Dr Y. T. Chow, who had visited the ORC, in
creating a new optoelectronics research centre.
From this base he was able to take up a number of other honorary
positions, including honorary professor at the Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, and at Shanghai, Shandung and Huazhung universities, all in
the People’s Republic of China. Alec
Gambling continued to make invited conference presentations, particularly in
China, but also in Australia, India and the UK. Further, he became involved in laboratory
research again, and several papers and patent applications were produced with
Chinese collaborators. Between 1998 and
2001 Alec Gambling was director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the
City University of Hong Kong.
In 2001, Alec
Gambling retired from his post as Director of the Optoelectronics Research
Centre at the City University of Hong Kong and went to live in retirement in
Spain, but was soon tempted back to China, working from Shanghai, to become
Director of R&D Optoelectronics with LTK Industries Ltd, a post he occupied
until 2005. During that period Alec
considered taking up residence in Hong Kong, but was unsuccessful in his
application. The Gamblings then returned
to Spain to resume their retirement.
A
picture of Alec Gambling at dinner in Hong Kong, May 2006 with (front row, L-R)
Pak L. Chu, Allan W. Snyder and Charles Kao and standing (L-R) Anson Yeung,
K.S. Chiang and H.P. Chan
Leadership and professional roles
It has
already been pointed out that one of the most important roles played by Alec
Gambling in the development of the OFG, and subsequently the ORC, was as a
leader, negotiator and policy-setter. Within
the University of Southampton he was appointed head of the Department of
Electronics between 1974 and 1979, a role he had resisted for some years while
he developed his research group. Subsequently,
he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. Even before he undertook these onerous
internal appointments, he had begun to assume a leadership role in the
professional institutions and on government bodies, too numerous to list in
total. A few key roles were: Member of
the Technology Sub-Committee, University Grants Committee, between 1973 and
1983; Member of the Management Committee, UK Joint Optoelectronics Research
Scheme (DTI/SERC), between 1982 and 1987; Chairman of the National
Optoelectronics Committee (DTI/SERC), between 1988 and 1991; Member of the
Cabinet Office Optoelectronics Mission to Japan; Member of the Devices
Committee (DTI/SERC), from 1988 to 1991; Member of the UK Industry
Optoelectronics Action Group, between 1988 and 1992; Member of the Council of
the Royal Academy of Engineering, from 1989 to 1992.
Family life and personality
Alec Gambling
and Margaret Pooley had three children together. He married his second wife,
Coleen O’Neil, in 1994 and she travelled to China with him. On full retirement
in 2005, the couple went to live at Benidorm, in the region of Valencia.
Alec Gambling
sometimes came across as a quiet man, but those who knew him well understood
that he only spoke when he had something significant to contribute. He abhorred empty comment. A strong believer in international
collaboration, Alec hoped that the dramatic developments in telecommunications,
to which he had made a major contribution, would lead to better understanding
between nations and improve humankind. Alec
had a dry wit and loved a wry joke. In
retirement, looking back on his achievements, he was quietly proud that a
grammar school boy from a modest social background in Port Talbot could be
elected FRS, awarded the Faraday Medal, and made a Freeman of the City of
London. Although he was always keenly aware of the practical applications of
optoelectronic discoveries, commercial life never appealed to him as much as
the fascination he derived from operating near the forefront of research in his
chosen subject.
William
Alexander Gambling died at Benidorm in 2021, having reached the age of 94.
Don Fox and
Richard Laming
20250602
donaldpfox@gmail.com
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