Nobel winner labors to keep up with new advances

Canadian-born physicist Willard Boyle says he struggles to keep up with the pace of advancement in digital camera technology since his 1969 co-invention of the "electronic eye."

"Unfortunately I own several digital cameras," he told public broadcaster CBC. "I always buy the latest model that has come out, and that means that they change models so fast that my bank account can hardly keep up with it."

Boyle was Tuesday awarded the Nobel Physics Prize, which he also shares with American George Smith for their 1969 invention of the CCD (charge-coupled device) sensor, the original "electronic eye" behind the digital camera.

Charles Kao, a Hong Kong based physicist, won the second half of the award for groundbreaking achievements in the use of glass fibres for optical communication.

Boyle, a native of Amherst, Nova Scotia who holds Canadian and US citizenship and a doctorate in physics from McGill University in Montreal, told reporters he often witnessed practical applications of his work.

"When I go around these days, I see everybody using our little digital cameras, everywhere, and although they don't use exactly our CCD, it started it all," he said.

"So we are the ones, I guess, that started this profusion of little small cameras working all over the world," he added, when asked by Swedish television if he really felt he was a "master of light," as the committee dubbed this year's laureates.

Most digital cameras today use the more efficient CMOS sensor, though the CCD sensor is still used for advanced photography.

One of these advanced uses of the CCD was in the Mars probe, which Boyle described as "the most important part of our invention, which affected me personally."

"When the Mars probe was on the surface of Mars ... it used a camera like ours ... it would not have been possible without our invention," said Boyle, emotion brimming from his voice as he recounted how he could see the surface of Mars from his home thanks to his own invention.

The Nobel committee said the CCD "revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film," lauding the invention's practical and medical applications, such as imaging the inside of the human body both for diagnostics and microsurgery.

Boyle himself offered mixed feelings about the discovery, telling the Canadian Broadcasting Corp: "Well, it's like so many major discoveries of this kind, it has its good parts, and it has its bad parts.

"I think the good part of it is that it's put a new eye as far as the public is concerned to be able to look at what is going on in our society, and alert people to potential problems," he said, noting cameras pointed at police.

Since the Nobel prize announcement, his phone "has been ringing absolutely steadily for the last three hours," he added.

His wife Betty said she had to give him "a really good shake" to wake him at 5:15 am local time to receive a telephone call from Stockholm announcing he had won.

Boyle said he thought at first the call was a "joke" but "it was no joke."

"They don't tell you until the last minute, and it's the biggest surprise of your life to wake up and somebody says you've won a Nobel prize. I said my God," he said. "For a physicist that is the top of the heap."

"We're just thrilled," echoed his wife, who said the couple met in their early twenties when Boyle was a fighter pilot and had four children who have given them 10 grandchildren.

Boyle credits his mother "and the books that she chose for me which were very broad in their scope including Egyptian science" for nurturing his interest in science.

Despite his scientific genius, however, his "darn little cell phone" still trips him up, quipped his wife.