Herman A. Haus, 77; MIT Expert in Optical Communications

Herman A. Haus, 77, an MIT professor who was a leading authority on optical communications, died May 21 of heart failure at his home in Lexington, Mass. He had just completed his regular, 15-mile bicycle commute from the school’s Cambridge campus when he was stricken.

A member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty for nearly 50 years, Haus combined his knowledge of electrical engineering and quantum mechanics to advance technologies used in eye surgery, medical imaging and precision clocks. His work focused on a generation of laser pulses shorter than a billionth of a second.

The work of Haus and his colleagues in the private sector helped create the rapid voice and data communications of fiber-optic undersea cables linking America, Europe and Asia.

Born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Haus and his mother were shipped to Austria after Josip Broz Tito’s communist-backed forces expelled the German-speaking population of Slovenia after World War II. He eventually immigrated to the United States, where he earned his bachelor’s degree from Union College and a master’s from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Haus received a doctorate from MIT in 1954 and joined the faculty as an assistant professor. He was made a full professor in the early 1960s.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he received a National Medal of Science from President Clinton in 1995.