NEWARK , November 10, 1999 - The mean streets of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section may seem light years away from the esoteric world of lasers, photons and electrons, but for New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) Distinguished Professor and Chairperson of the Physics Department Anthony M. Johnson, that's where it all began.

      The 45-year-old Johnson, who is also Chairperson of the NJIT-Rutgers (Newark) University, Federated Physics Department, was elected this month to become Vice President of the prestigious Optical Society of America in 2000; In August, he was named to the Department of Energy's (DOE) Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee.

      The appointments are just two more to add to a long list of honors and achievements the unassuming NJIT professor has earned since his parents and a fourth grade teacher at P.S. 233 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, set him on the path toward a career in science and higher education.

      "I had an interest in math and science very early," recalls the soft-spoken scientist, who spent 14 "rewarding years" as a Distinguished Member of the AT&T Bell Labs Technical Staff in the Photonics Circuits Research Department (now part of Lucent Technologies), Holmdel, NJ, before coming to NJIT as Department Chairperson almost five years ago. "But what really inspired me was a fourth grade teacher who encouraged us to have a 'show and tell' and bring an experiment to school."

      After mentioning the "show and tell" to his parents, Helen Y. Johnson, a buyer for the now defunct Abraham and Straus, and James W. Johnson, a bus driver for the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority, the future professor found a chemistry set under the tree that Christmas. "My parents were typical loving working class folks and not very knowledgeable in the sciences, but they wholeheartedly supported my interest," says Johnson.

      Later on as a student at Tilden High School in East Flatbush, he crossed paths with another teacher whose enthusiasm inspired him to focus on physics. "I decided to go to Brooklyn Poly (then Polytechnic Institute of New York, now called Polytechnic University) and major in physics because he had done the same."

      That got him started, but Johnson's own drive to succeed and his natural aptitude for math and science have been largely responsible for the rest.

      As Vice President of the Optical Society of America, which consists of more than 11,400 optical scientists, engineers, and technicians in the United States and some 50 other countries, Johnson is in line to become President-Elect of the Society in 2001 and President in 2002. He had served since 1995 as Editor-in-Chief of the society's journal, Optics Letters.

      As a member of the DOE advisory committee, the NJIT physics department chairperson will help advise the Administration on "long-range plans, priorities and strategies to effectively address scientific aspects of energy-related basic sciences," as well as on "appropriate levels of funding" needed.

      Johnson is a former member of the National Research Council's Committee on Atomic, Molecular and Optical Sciences, a General Councillor and Executive Board member of the American Physical Society (APS), the Executive Committee of the APS Laser Science Topical Group, a former Chairperson of the APS Committee on Minorities in Physics, and Chair of the Nominations and Screening Committee of the National Society of Black Physicists, among many other scientific and educational groups in which he has been active.

      He also co-chaired the 1992 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO '92), the world's largest laser meeting with over 7,000 attendees.

      But appointments and honors aside, Johnson's primary motivating forces are his love of science and teaching. The NJIT professor's scientific contributions have included leading a team of researchers in the development of high-speed semiconductor lasers for high-speed fiber-optic communication systems.

      Such systems, which are expected to power the future development of telecommunications and the Information Age, are based upon photons (quanta or particles of electromagnetic energy) or light flowing through fiber optic cables.

      Photons have replaced electrons flowing through copper wire in telecommunications because electrons experience very high losses (attenuation) at the very high frequencies (data rates) of today's high-speed telecommunications systems. "These systems have nearly limitless capacity," says Johnson. "For example," he notes, "A single fiber optic system can transmit as many as 600,000 phone conversations simultaneously."

      Since coming to NJIT, Johnson says, he has found "many research jewels." One of the "jewels" is being polished by Johnson himself, who is using his extensive optical research skills gained at Bell Labs to study optical nonlinearities in fibers.

      Optical nonlinearities are properties of fiber optic cable that limit the amount of power transmitted through a fiber. They also can cause noise and crosstalk in lightwave systems that lead to transmission errors. These effects are called nonlinear, because their strength depends on the square (or some higher power) of the intensity of the light, rather than simply on the amount of light present (linear optics).

      However, nonlinearities also can be cleverly used to advantage. For example, among unwanted nonlinear effects are new light frequencies generated by an optical signal. This same nonlinearity can be used as an ultrafast optical switch to enhance the speed and performance of a telecommunication system.

      Another of Johnson's research "jewels" involves fiber optic amplifiers doped with the rare earth element, erbium.

      Such amplifiers are needed because signals fade away with distance when traveling through any type of cable, whether copper or optical fiber. Fiber optic systems carry signals at the same, or much, much greater speeds as copper cables, 100ths of Megabits/second (1 Megabit/second = 1 million bits of information per second). However, the fiber optic systems also can carry signals much longer distances, 50 to 150 kilometers compared to a few kilometers for copper systems.

      When the signal becomes weak, both types of communication systems need a mechanism to boost the signal. Copper cable systems use electronic repeaters, while fiber optic systems use optical amplifiers. The most widely used amplifiers are erbium-doped fiber amplifiers or EDFAs. When suitably optically pumped, the EDFA behaves like a laser (minus the mirrors of a conventional laser) and amplifies the signal pulse as it passes through.

      The NJIT physicist is also leading a research effort to determine if EDFAs - because they amplify high-speed optical signals -- can cause unwanted nonlinear effects in communications systems. Johnson has developed a new technique to measure nonlinearities in fibers and EDFAs which has attracted the interest of Lucent Technologies. Lucent colleagues have donated EDFAs and pump lasers for this research.

      Another of Johnson's contacts with Lucent Technologies recently resulted in a major equipment donation by the firm to NJIT's Physics Department -- a modified scanning electron microscope known as a cathodoluminescence system.

      The new equipment will allow NJIT Physics Department to expand its materials science efforts to examine more technologically important materials, primarily the microscopic world of nano-structures. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter or a thousandth of a micron (A human hair is on average, about 70,000 nanometers or 70 microns or 0.0028 inches in diameter).

      The new system uses electron-stimulated luminescence (cathodoluminescence) instead of photon-stimulated luminescence (photoluminescence) as in a typical microscope, to image features 100 times smaller than a micron - about 10 nanometers wide.

      Johnson's educational goals include expanding NJIT's Physics Department to attract more students, particularly minority students and women. The professor recalls that he was only one of four African-Americans to receive a Ph.D. in physics in 1981 - "Numbers that remain virtually unchanged today," he notes. "I want to change it."

      One of Johnson's most enjoyable experiences at Bell Labs, he says, was mentoring and interacting with students and working on experiments with them. Student collaboration also was one of the attractions of NJIT. "Leaving Bell Labs was a tough decision because I really enjoyed my work there and have wonderful memories. Being at NJIT has given me the best of both worlds because I have managed to maintain my strong collaborative ties to Bell Labs."

      Well aware of Johnson's teaching skills and his commitment to recruiting and retaining minorities and women in the sciences, Lucent Technologies recently asked him to serve as Academic Consultant to the Bell Labs Cooperative Research Fellowship Program for Minorities (CRFP), an offer the professor says he will probably accept. Johnson was a 1975 CRFP Fellow after graduating with a B.S. in Physics, Magna cum Laude, from Brooklyn's Polytechnic Institute of New York (now called Polytechnic University). "The CRFP Program is not only dear to my heart because of the opportunities it afforded me, but it will also give our Physics Department access to some of the top minority students in the country," he notes.

      His Ph.D. in Physics was obtained from City College of New York (CCNY), although the future physicist did most of his thesis work at Bell Labs. He also had a pair of very distinguished thesis advisors, one from each institution, he notes. "At Bell Labs, I had David Auston, who is now President of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and at City College, I had Robert Alfano, who is currently a major figure in the area of Optics in Biology and Medicine."

      Johnson now lives in Freehold, NJ, with his wife, Dr. Adrienne Steplight-Johnson, who has a doctoral degree in nursing education, and their three children, Kimberly, 16; Justin, 15 and Brandon, 13. But he still maintains his Brooklyn ties, and visits family and friends there regularly.

      The professor, who also has two younger brothers in Brooklyn, notes that he was the first member of his family to go to college. "I used to joke with Adrienne that if I didn't pass my Ph.D. qualifying exam, I could always drive a bus like my dad."

      Fortunately for NJIT, its physics students and research efforts, Johnson easily qualified.

      NJIT is a public research university enrolling nearly 8,200 bachelor's, master's and doctoral students in 83 degree programs through its five colleges: Newark College of Engineering, School of Architecture, College of Science and Liberal Arts, the School of Management and the Albert Dorman Honors College. Research initiatives include manufacturing, microelectronics, multimedia, transportation, computer science, solar astrophysics, environmental engineering and science, and architecture and building science.

      Yahoo! Internet Life magazine has ranked NJIT as America's "most wired" public university for two consecutive years, U.S. News and World Report's 1999 Annual Guide to America's Best Colleges ranked NJIT among the nation's top universities, and Money magazine's most recent issue of Best College Buys rated NJIT as the sixth best value among U.S. science and technology schools and among the top 100 overall. In September 1999, Mademoiselle ranked NJIT as the second most Internet-connected university in the nation.