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Gordon Gould
Gordon Gould (born July 17, 1920,New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 16, 2005, New York) was an American physicist who played an important role in earlylaser research and coined the wordlaser (lightamplification bystimulatedemission ofradiation).
Gould received abachelor’s degree inphysics fromUnion College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1941 and amaster’s degree in physics fromYale University two years later. He then worked on theManhattan Project but was released from the project because of his membership in acommunist political group (which he left in 1948). He started teaching physics at the City College of New York in 1946, and he entered graduate school atColumbia University,New York City, in 1949.
He came up with the idea of the laser and its name in 1957. He had discussed the idea with physicistCharles Townes, who had invented themaser, which amplifiedmicrowave radiation. Gould took Townes’s advice that he should write down his ideas and notarize them as a first step of applying for apatent. Gould left Columbia and joined the defense research firmTechnical Research Group (TRG) in 1958 to work on building a laser. Believing that he first needed to have a workingprototype, he waited until 1959 to apply for a patent, but by that time Townes and physicistArthur Schawlow had filed such an application and his was rejected. With the initial support of TRG and with his notarized notebook as his main piece of evidence, Gould fought Townes and Schawlow’s award of the laser patent. After many years of litigation, he prevailed, and in 1977 he was issued the first of the four U.S. basic laser patents that he was eventually granted. The laser industry then fought the award of patents to Gould toavoid paying him millions of dollars in royalties, but he finally prevailed in 1987.
During the legal struggle over the laser patents, Gould taught at the Polytechnic Institute of New York from 1967 to 1973, and he founded an optical communications company,Optelecom, in 1973. He retired from Optelecom in 1985, and he was inducted into the (U.S.) National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991.