My story is one of great luck! I’m 86 years old, and for the last 63 years I have worked in the world of lasers and optics. (Yes, I’m still working.)

By age five, I had made two decisions: I wanted to be a scientist, and I wanted to have children. In the community where I lived in Houston, Texas, I was also impressed that people around me with the best jobs worked for the Hughes Tool Company. I thought that perhaps someday I would work for Hughes.

My dad taught me how to make things, and my mom made it inconceivable that I would not go to college. I earned a BS in physics and math from Valparaiso University in 1960. The next piece of good luck came as I was entering grad school: the invention of the laser at Hughes Aircraft Company. I settled for an MS from Wayne State University and got a job at Hughes, working to extend the usefulness of lasers. I learned to be a systems engineer, a role that would dominate the rest of my life.

Also at Hughes, with luck playing an important role, I invented tunable dye lasers during my second pregnancy (I have three wonderful daughters!). After 13 years at Hughes, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) became interested in Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS); I understood how dye lasers could produce laser-line widths narrow enough to make this mission possible. My next years were filled with building prototype equipment for an AVLIS plant capable of delivering fuel for nuclear-power plants. We made tremendous progress, building full-scale hardware and operating a laser-pumped dye laser 24/7 for ten years.

Although my hopes for AVLIS were dashed, soon after, I was in the right place at the right time to join the LLNL effort to complete the design, install the hardware, and operate the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world’s highest energy laser. During completion of the design, I was the lead systems engineer, responsible for several design features that contributed to making it so successful. In December 2023, NIF demonstrated fusion ignition in the laboratory for the first time. Today, I’m still helping improve the ultimate performance of NIF.

Mary Spaeth
Senior Scientist, National Ignition Facility and Photon Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Grandmother of six
Born in United States / Resides in United States
Educational Background: BS in Physics and Math, Valparaiso University, United States; MS in Physics, Wayne State University, United States