M. Saadat Noury

Iranians like some other nations have also deliberately contributed to many fields of science, music, art, poetry and literature through their various eras of history. The magnificent contributions of Avicenna (Pur Sina), Razi, Khayyam, Khwarizmi (Kaarazmi), Farabi, Hafez, Mowlavi (Rumi), Ferdowsi, and Saadi in the fields of Medicine, Chemistry, Astronomy, Mathematics and Algebra, Music, Poetry and Literature respectively are known to be of great magnitude, undeniable, and indisputable. The significant roles of those Iranians in contributing to the fields of science, art, etc., have been already discussed in the separate articles written by this author. In this article, the life stories and the works of three Iranians (Ali Javan, Tofygh Mussivand, and Rouzbeh Yassini) as the First Iranian Experts in Modern Technology who are Famous Worldwide will be studied and discussed.
Ali Javan, Co-inventor of Gas Laser, was born on 26 December 1926 in Tehran, Iran. In 1939 he completed his primary educations and in 1945 he was graduated from Alborz High School, one of the best training centers of Iran at the time. He received his BS degree in Physics from the Faculty of Sciences, Tehran University, in 1948. Ali Javan then immigrated to the States where he got his PhD degree in Physics from Columbia University, New York, in 1954.
After graduation from Columbia and at age 28, Ali Javan was appointed as a Researcher at Bell Labs. It was in those Labs where he first proposed the principles of Gas Lasers that led him to invent, with the cooperation of William R Bennett, a laser composed of two gases of Helium and Neon. The Gas Laser invention was firstly tested on 12 December 1960. It should be noted that the Gas Laser has been defined as a laser in which an electric current is discharged through a gas to produce light. The invention of Gas Laser laid the foundation for Fiber Optic Communication. Gas Laser is considered the most practical and profitable type of Laser in use today, and it is also used in Holography (a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed), Universal Product Code Checkout Scanners (for tracking trade items in stores), and some other construction, medical, and monitoring technologies.
In 1961, Ali Javan joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as an Associate Professor in Physics and he has been a Full Professor of MIT since 1964.
During his academic life, Professor Javan has received many medals and awards, which may be summarized as follows: Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute (1964), Fanny and John Hertz Foundation Medal (1966), Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1966), Fredric Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America (1975), Humboldt Foundation Fellowship (1975 and 1995), Albert Einstein World Award of Science of the World Cultural Council (1993), Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (6 May 2006).
Tofygh Mussivand, Inventor of the World’s first Artificial Cardiac Pump, was born in 1936 in Hamadan, Iran. He got his BS degree in Agriculture from Tehran University. He then studied Engineering at University of Alberta, Canada. Following many successful years in senior positions in Canadian Government, Crown Corporations, and the Private Sector, Engineer Mussivand went on to receive his doctorate degree in Medical Engineering and Medical Sciences at the University of Akron and Northeastern Ohio College of Medicine. Mussivand then joined the Cleveland Clinic Hospital and Research Foundation where he gained knowledge and experience in the development of medical devices. In 1989 and at age 53, Mussivand invented the World’s first Artificial Cardiac Pump (ACP). ACP is a device that temporarily takes over the function of breathing and pumping blood for a patient. ACP is mostly used in heart surgery so that a patient’s heart can be disconnected from the body for longer than the 20 minutes and the surgeon has therefore an ample time to work and save the patient.
Shortly after the invention, Mussivand was promoted as a Professor in Surgery and Engineering at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is now the Professor in Surgery and Engineering and also the director of Medical Device Program at the Universities of Ottawa and Carlton, both located in Canada. Professor Mussivand has published over 250 research papers and technical articles, and he is an honorary member of Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences.
Rouzbeh Yassini, Inventor of the Cable Modem, holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from West Virginia University, USA. He also holds an Honorary PhD in Science from the same University and an Honorary PhD from Merrimack College (located in North Andover, Massachusetts, USA), as well as an equivalent MBA from General Electric’s Financial Management Program.
Rouzbeh Yassini was the founder of LANcity and helped to establish the cable modem industry standard through Cable Television Laboratories. He is well known in industry circles as the Father of the Cable Modem for inventing this technology. It should be noted that a cable modem is a type of Network Bridge and modem that provides bi-directional data communication via radio frequency channels on a cable television infrastructure. Cable modems are primarily used to deliver broadband Internet access in the form of cable Internet, taking advantage of the high bandwidth of a cable television network.
In the spring of 2008, Dr Yassini opened the Yassini Broadband Knowledge Center in Boston, offering research grants and facilities to investigate fresh ideas in Broadband Technology that will improve the way we work and live. As the founder of YAS Broadband Ventures, Dr Yassini also serves as a board member on a number of privately and publicly held companies.
Epilogues:
1. Considering the Online Journalism as one of the most practical and highly popular Modern Technologies, the founder and the chief-editor of the Online Journal of Iranian dot com (IC) Jahanshah Javid (JJ) must be also added to the present list, which is the subject of this article. The life story of JJ and his works can be viewed on different sections of IC. Janet Alexanian noted that, “JJ founded IC in 1995, at a time when the Iranian Community in the United States was sizeable and its presence online was increasingly steadily…IC has become a forum for literary expression, personal memoirs, and political debate”. It may be interesting to know that the first issue of IC was published almost simultaneously when people in North America were celebrating Canada Day in Canada and Independence Day in the USA, the days of joy and feast!
2. The fact of the matter is that any invention consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought!

Manouchehr Saadat Noury, PhD

References
Alexanian, J. (2008): Online Article on “Nothing is scared, Interview with Jahanshah Javid”.
Rasekhoon Website (2009): Online Interview with Professor Mussivand (in Persian).
Saadat Noury, M. (2010): Online Articles on First Iranians in reference to Avicenna (Pur Sina), Razi, Khwarizmi (Kaarazmi), and Farabi.
Saadat Noury, M. (2010): Online Articles on First Iranian Kings in Persian Poetry, Ferdowsi, Saadai, Hafez, Khayyam and Mowlavi (Rumi).
Saadat Noury, M. (2010): Online Article on Few Moments with Hakim Omar Khayyam.
Taylor, N. (2000): Laser, the Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the 30 Year Patent War, ed., Simon & Schuster Publications, New York, USA.
Various Sources (2010): Notes and News on Ali Javan, Tofigh Mussivand, and Rouzbeh Yassini (in English & Persian).
Wikipedia Encyclopedia (2010): Online Notes on Gas Laser, Cable Modem, and Artificial Cardiac Pump.
Wikipedia Encyclopedia (2010): Online Notes on Ali Javan, Tofy Mussivand, and Rouzbeh Yassini.
YAS Website (2010): Online Profile of Rouzbeh Yassini.

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