Awarded May, 1998, at Texas A&M University. This was the inaugural year for the Lamb Award. Subsequent awards were made at the annual Winter Colloquium on the Physics of Quantum Electronics.

Ali Javan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

For the invention of the helium-neon laser.

Olga Kocharovskaya, Texas A&M University

Paul Mandel, Université Libre de Bruxelles

For contributions to the study of atomic coherence effects in masers and lasers.