Peter C. Schultz

Peter C. Schultz (born 1942) is an American ceramics scientist who, with Robert Maurer and Donald Keck, found a way to make an efficient optical fiber in 1970. The fiber was based on pure silica glass and a distinctive vaporization method, where other researchers were still using the traditional melting process. The team overcame two obstacles with silica: its very high melting point, which made drawing a fiber difficult, and its refractive index, the lowest of any practically available glass, which mattered because the glass would carry the light. They produced a fiber with an inner core of silica mixed with a dopant that raised the refractive index, surrounded by an outer skin. Schultz was born in Brooklyn, New York, earned his bachelor degree in 1964 and a doctorate in ceramics in 1967 from Rutgers University, and joined Corning in 1967.