Tunable coherent vacuum ultraviolet radiation and its application to molecular spectroscopy: The seminal contributions of Professor

Few have had the impact of Professor Boris P. Stoicheff on atomic, molecular, and optical physics and in the fields of nonlinear optics and molecular spectroscopy, in particular. This paper recounts a few of his accomplishments in the generation of coherent radiation tunable in the VUV and the application of this short wavelength source to the spectroscopy of diatomic molecules, with emphasis on the rare gas dimers Ar2, Kr2, and Xe2.