Gordon Gould
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Gordon Gould (July 17, 1920 — September 16, 2005) was an American physicist and the credited inventor of the laser. Born in New York City, he was the oldest of three sons. Both his parents were Methodists active in their community church, but he himself was an avowed atheist. His father was the founding editor of Scholastic Magazine Publications in New York City. Gordon Gould was able to trace his ancestry to the first crossing of the Mayflower on his father's side, but he took the most pride in a perhaps mythical ancestor on his mother's side, whom he claimed was a pirate named Wonny LaRue. He named one of his sailboats after this ancestor. He was educated at Union College and Yale University, majoring in physics with an emphasis on optics. He also did post graduate doctoral work at Columbia University. Between 1943 and 1945 he worked on the Manhattan Project, and after the war returned to Columbia University, studying optical and microwave spectroscopy.
In 1957, Gould thought of a solution to the problem of producing a beam of coherent visible light, a problem that had plagued researchers for several years. Gould's solution was to excite atoms or molecules through either the use of bright light or atomic-level collisions to produce a population inversion. At the same time, he coined the name for the laser. His work coincided with that of Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes's independent work on 'optical masers'. Gould created the first written prototype for a laser and, realizing what he had in hand, took it to a neighborhood store to have his notebook notarized.
In 1977, he won the first of his legal battles for patent rights, eventually winning lucrative patents for "Optically Pumped Laser Amplifiers" and "Light Amplifiers Employing Collisions to Produce a Population Inversion," which together represent most lasers used today. For example, the first operating laser, the ruby laser, is optically-pumped; the helium-neon laser used in many bar code scanners is pumped by gas discharge. Controversy over who was the true inventor of the laser, fueled by Townes and Schawlow's subsequent claims, followed Gould his whole life, but he ultimately prevailed in his legal struggles and was found in a court of law, after many challenges and setbacks, to be the rightful owner of the patent(s). He did not start receiving royalties until 1988, when he won the last of the court battles with companies disputing the patents. The thirty year patent war that it took for Gould to win the rights to the laser became known as one of the most important patent battles in history.
"I thought that he legitimately had a right to the notion to making a laser amplifier," said Dr. Bennett, who was a member of the team that built the first laser that could fire continuously. "He was able to collect royalties from other people making lasers, including me."
The delay - and the subsequent spread of lasers into many areas of technology - meant that the patents were much more valuable than if he had won initially. Even though Mr. Gould had signed away 80 percent of the proceeds in order to finance his court costs, "he made millions upon millions of dollars," Mr. Taylor said. "Even at the 20 percent he was left with, he in his last years was a rich man."
Mr. Gould joined the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, now Polytechnic University, in 1967 as a professor. He left to help found Optelecom, a company in Gaithersburg, Md., that makes fiberoptical equipment. He left his successful company in 1985 because it was "boring."
In 1991, Gould was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, Mr. Gould said in his acceptance speech: "I think it's important to be self-critical. You have to weed out all of the aspects of an idea that aren't going to work, or reject the entire idea in favor of some new idea. You have to be encouraged to try things, even if they don't work."
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