Most of the research on laser glasses in China is carried out at Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, and significant achievements have been made since 1962. A review of the current status of development of laser glass is presented, including chemical compositions and physical properties, manufacturing technology, measurement and inspection and some fundamental research.In the early years of 1960’s, laser output was obtained from Nd-doped silicate, borate, phosphate glasses. We made great effort to develop various Nd-doped silicate glasses for different laser devices and to improve their performances. In recent years development of phosphate and fluorophosphate glasses has been emphasized. Several Nd-doped glasses have been produced commercially. The spectroscopic, physical and laser properties of Nd-doped glasses are listed in the appendix of this paper.We paid more attention to develop a melting process for making laser glass and a protective atmospheric melting apparatus was built. Large silicate glass rods of up to 7 cm in diameter and 150 cm long and phosphate glass disc of up to 30 cm in diameter have been obtained.Various methods for measuring different kinds of physical properties of laser glasses have been also investigated and the corresponding apparatus installed. Emphasis is laid on the inspection of optical quality of large size glass products, and laser holographic interferometer for optical homogeniety measurement has been developed.This paper also reports some fundamental research results on laser glasses. As for laser glass spectroscopy, the spectral properties and structural state of rare earth ions in inorganic glasses were early investigated. The study of spectral and luminescent properties of Nd-doped glasses was emphasized. Further detailed studies on the influence of the glass bases on spectral properties of Nd ion and energy transfer process of Nd ions in glasses were made. We syst- ematically investigated the intense laser induced damage, thermal blooming and self-focusing in glass medium, various equipments for measuring nonlinear refractive index of glasses and a new calculation method with high accuracy were developed.