Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the

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1 Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The... SCIENCE Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies By KENNETH CHANG SEPT. 20, 2005 Gordon Gould, who fought for three decades for recognition of his work in the invention of the laser -- and eventually won millions of dollars in royalties -- died on Friday at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. He was 85. His death was confirmed by his wife, Marilyn Appel. In 1957, Mr. Gould came up with insights into how to build a device that shot out a narrow, intense beam of light. He also came up with its name -- an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation." Lasers, he envisioned, could be used for welding, cutting or heating. They would do for optics, he said, what transistors had done for electronics. Mr. Gould was proved right, as various forms of lasers came to be used for communications, surgery, and even precise measurements of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. But his role in the actual invention was murkier, disputed over decades in the courts and even now in scientific circles. "You would have a lot of argument," said Nick Taylor, author of "Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the 30-Year Patent War." In 1954, Mr. Gould arrived at Columbia University as a graduate student interested in optics. Charles H. Townes, then a physics professor at Columbia, had just published a scientific paper describing the "maser," a predecessor to the laser 1 of 4 8/9/15, 2:02 PM

2 Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The... that amplified microwaves, and was thinking about how to apply the same idea to visible light. Mr. Gould said that the insights for how to build a laser came to him one Saturday night in November 1957 and that by the end of the weekend he had written down his ideas and sketches in a notebook, predicting that the device could heat something to extremely high temperatures in a fraction of a second. In a move that proved prescient, he had the notebook notarized. Dr. Townes, now an emeritus professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said he had had his ideas on how to build a laser a couple of months earlier and had talked to Mr. Gould about them some three weeks before Mr. Gould wrote his notebook. "I think some of his claims are factually incorrect," Dr. Townes said. He said also of Mr. Gould, "I think he did some good original work." Dr. Townes and Arthur L. Schawlow, then a researcher at Bell Labs, published the first scientific paper describing a laser in December Mr. Gould did not apply for his patent until several months later, because he had mistakenly thought that he had to first build a prototype. Mr. Gould left Columbia and joined Technical Research Group, a company in Syosset, on Long Island, to try to turn to the laser into a practical device. The military provided $1 million, but Mr. Gould could not work on the research himself. He was denied security clearance because he had taken part in a Marxist study group with his first wife, Glen Fulwider, in the 1940's. That marriage ended in annulment in The first working laser was not built until 1960, by Theodore Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories in California. Gordon Gould was born in 1920 in New York City. He graduated from Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., in 1941 with a bachelor's degree in physics, and after earning a master's degree from Yale, went to Columbia to work on his doctorate, which he did not complete. "His idol was Thomas Edison, not some academic figure," Ms. Appel, said. "He 2 of 4 8/9/15, 2:02 PM

3 Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The... always wanted to make something useful for mankind." 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. All the while, he pursued his laser patent applications. "He always said it was just around the corner," Ms. Appel said. In 1977, Mr. Gould won his first patent for fundamental laser work. He did not start receiving royalties until 1988, when he won the last of the court battles with companies disputing the patents. "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." Dr. Bennett would not describe him as the inventor of the laser, though. "He was a clever fellow, and he had some interesting notions," he said. "They were mainly suggestions that others carried out later." Mr. Gould's second marriage, to Ruth Hill, ended in divorce. He is survived by Ms. Appel. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991, 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." 3 of 4 8/9/15, 2:02 PM

4 Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The The New York Times Company 4 of 4 8/9/15, 2:02 PM

5 U.S. Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life, Dies at 99 By ROBERT D. McFADDEN JAN. 28, 2015 Charles H. Townes, a visionary physicist whose research led to the development of the laser, making it possible to play CDs, scan prices at the supermarket, measure time precisely, survey planets and galaxies, and even witness the birth of stars, died on Tuesday in Oakland, Calif. He was 99. His death was confirmed by his daughter Linda Rosenwein. In 1964, Dr. Townes and two Russians shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on microwave-emitting devices, called masers, and their light-emitting successors, lasers, which have transformed modern communications, medicine, astronomy, weapons systems and daily life in homes and workplaces. One of the most versatile inventions of the 20th century, the laser amplifies waves of stimulated atoms that shoot out as narrow beams of light, to read CDs and bar codes, guide missiles, cut steel, perform eye surgery, make astronomical measurements and carry out myriad other tasks, from transmitting a thousand books a second over fiber optic lines to entertaining crowds with light shows. The technological revolution spawned by lasers, laying foundations for much of the gadgetry and scientific knowledge the world now takes for granted, was given enormous momentum by the discoveries of Dr. Townes and because almost nothing important in science is done in isolation by the contributions of colleagues and competitors. 1 of 5 9/7/15, 1:47 PM

6 Thus, Dr. Townes shared his Nobel with Nikolai G. Basov and Aleksandr M. Prokhorov, of the Lebedev Institute for Physics in Moscow, whom he had never met. It was Dr. Townes and Dr. Arthur L. Schawlow who wrote the 1958 paper Infrared and Optical Masers, describing a device to produce laser light, and secured a patent for it. A graduate student, R. Gordon Gould, came up with insights on how to build it, and named it a laser, for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. And it was Dr. Theodore H. Maiman, a physicist with Hughes Aircraft in California, who built the first operational laser in Over six decades, Dr. Townes developed radar bombing systems and navigation devices during World War II, advised presidents and government commissions on lunar landings and the MX missile system, verified Einstein s cosmological theories, discovered ammonia molecules at the center of the Milky Way and created an atomic clock that measured time to within one second in 300 years. He moved easily from lab to classroom to government policy-making groups: with Bell Laboratories for nearly a decade when it was the world s most innovative scientific organization; with Columbia University for more than 20 years, when he achieved his most important breakthroughs; and with the Institute for Defense Analyses, a research center that advised the Pentagon on weapons and defense systems in the Cold War. Like most scientific researchers delving into unknown realms, Dr. Townes had not aimed to invent devices that would become laser printers or supermarket scanners, let alone technologies that would put movies on discs or revolutionize eye surgery. He was interested in molecular structures and the behavior of microwaves theoretically as a way to measure time with unprecedented accuracy, but more tangibly because the Pentagon, which partly funded his work at Columbia University s Radiation Laboratory, wanted better communications and radar systems using shorter wavelengths to reach greater distances. He had an a-ha! moment. Sitting on a park bench in Washington one April morning in 1951, pondering how to stimulate molecular energy to create shorter wavelengths, he conceived of a device he called a maser, for microwave amplification 2 of 5 9/7/15, 1:47 PM

7 by stimulated emission of radiation. It would use molecules to nudge other molecules, and amplify their thrust by getting them to resonate like tuning forks and line up in a powerful beam. He and two graduate students, James P. Gordon and H. J. Zeiger, built his maser in 1953 and patented their creation. It was the first device operating on the principles of the laser, although it amplified microwave radiation rather than infrared or visible light radiation. Five years later, Dr. Townes and Dr. Schawlow, who was his brother-in-law and would win the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on laser spectroscopy, drew a blueprint for a laser. They called it an optical maser, a term that never caught on, and through Bell Laboratories they secured the first laser patent in 1959, a year before Dr. Maiman s first working model. Despite their patent, they profited little. Both were bound to Bell Labs, Dr. Schawlow as an employee and Dr. Townes as a consultant. Dr. Gould, the former graduate student, was denied a laser patent in 1959, but in 1977 won a long court fight against the Townes-Schawlow patent and received some royalties. It was the entrepreneurs, however, who grew rich on laser products. Charles Hard Townes was born in Greenville, S.C., on July 28, 1915, one of six children of Ellen Hard Townes and Henry Townes, a lawyer. Charles, a brilliant student of wide interests, including entomology and ornithology, graduated from the local high school in 1931, when he was 15. (In Greenville, he was honored in 2006 with a public statue, depicting him on the park bench when he had his maser brainstorm.) At Furman University in Greenville, he majored in physics and modern languages, and was curator of the college museum and a member of the band, glee club, swimming team and newspaper staff. He graduated valedictorian with two bachelor s degrees in 1935 at age 19. Focusing on physics, he earned a master s degree at Duke University in 1937 and a doctorate at the California Institute of Technology in He joined Bell Laboratories in 1939 at its Murray Hill, N.J., headquarters and 3 of 5 9/7/15, 1:47 PM

8 developed wartime radar bombing and navigational systems. He later studied radio astronomy and microwave spectroscopy as a means of controlling electromagnetic waves. In 1941, Dr. Townes married Frances Brown. She survives him, as do their four daughters, Ms. Rosenwein, Ellen Townes-Anderson, Carla Kessler and Holly Townes; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. In 1948, he was named the executive director of the Radiation Laboratory at Columbia. Two years later, he became a full professor, and from 1952 to 1955 was the head of Columbia s physics department. He also lectured abroad on Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. Dr. Townes was often in the news in the 1950s and 60s under headlines that seemed like science fiction: Bell Shows Beam of Talking Light, Man Shines a Light on the Moon, Man Listens for Life on Worlds Afar. On leave from Columbia, he directed research at the Institute for Defense Analyses from 1959 to 1961, then became provost and taught at M.I.T. He joined the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 and retired in He and other Nobel laureates backed a nuclear test ban treaty in 1999 and, in 2003, opposed an American war in Iraq without wide international support. Besides more than 125 scientific papers, he wrote Microwave Spectroscopy (1955, with Dr. Schawlow) and two memoirs, Making Waves (1995) and How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist (2002). President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Science in 1982, and in 2005 he received the Templeton Prize for contributions to spiritual understanding. Calling himself a Protestant Christian, Dr. Townes saw science and religion as compatible, saying there was little difference between a scientific revelation, like his maser brainstorm, and a religious one. Understanding the order of the universe and understanding the purpose in the universe are not identical, he acknowledged in a paper in 1966, but they are not 4 of 5 9/7/15, 1:47 PM

9 very far apart. Correction: February 3, 2015 An obituary on Thursday about the physicist Charles H. Townes misstated the surname of a graduate student who helped him build a microwaveemitting device in He was H. J. Zeiger, not Zeigler. Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on January 29, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Charles H. Townes, Laser Pioneer, Dies The New York Times Company 5 of 5 9/7/15, 1:47 PM