Michael: An Extraordinary Life

My life began in Tela, Honduras in the jungles of a tropical paradise. The Japanese submarine fleet cruised the Pacific waters off the coast of Costa Rica where we lived, when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, triggering my decision to obtain a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, and Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering at Georgia Tech and harness that vast nuclear power.Ironically, my nuclear engineering studies led me to a PhD degree in Plasms Physics at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio, where the optical interferometer had been invented.Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, CA made me a Member of the Technical Staff with their laser group, where from knowing nothing about lasers I became an expert on pulsed ion and CO2 gas lasers.Then leaving and co-founding a laser manufacturing company, Britt Electronics-inventing lasers and developing photocoagulator medical instruments.Singer Librascope hired me as senior staff engineer to lead their electro-optical Internal Research and Development program, where I was awarded more patents, and in my spare time independently developed and patented a CO2 laser eye surgery instrument.Five years later I launched an aerospace engineering consulting company, with clients Rocketdyne, Rockwell, Litton, Gould, and many others.My consulting company Exocor Technology evolved into a commercial manufacturing venture where I developed and manufactured a line of digital electronic control systems for the stretch limousine industry, with customers all over the United States from California to New York.As fortune would have it, my last limo venture's failure led me to becoming a physics professor and heading the physics program at California Lutheran University, mastering, and teaching the entire undergraduate physics curriculum.My diverse engineering experience and a deep understanding of optics and quantum mechanics was crucial for tracing the passage of laser beams through the LIGO interferometer at Caltech, where I took charge of mitigating stray light and developing all the auxiliary optical systems needed to control the 2 1/2 mile long laser interferometer.The Nobel Prize 2017 in physics, for discovering and measuring the first gravity waves from outer space, would never have been awarded to the three principal scientists at LIGO without the invaluable contributions that I and the thousand other little turtles made.Each step of the way, I was constantly diverted into some branching pathway, other than the one I had consciously chosen. In retrospect, my entire life has been a living, breathing, walking, and talking case of quantum entanglement. You will discover that fact for yourself as you read this account of my extraordinary life