James Turrell, noted in particular for his sky spaces and light projections, watched the development of the hologram throughout the 1960s, keenly aware of its potential artistic merit. The development of the laser made the creation of holograms possible, and its invention was so radical that the Hungarian-British physicist Dennis Gabor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971 "for his invention and development of the holographic method." The possibility of genuinely making three-dimensional images by controlling a two-dimensional surface seemed to be a summary of what many of that slightly-earlier generation of artists, internationally, had collectively striven for. In the adoption of the hologram Turrell simply did what others had done before him, but just in the most up-to-date way possible, he used light itself as a material for making art.