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The laser is an outgrowth of a suggestion made by Albert Einstein in 1916 that under the proper circumstances atoms could release excess energy as light--either spontaneously or when stimulated by light.Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Prokhorov and Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov of the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow independently described the theory of maser operation.German physicist Rudolf Walther Ladenburg first observed stimulated emission in 1928, although at the time it seemed to have no practical use.