Schenectady, N.Y. (Jan. 3, 2002) – The College recently received a $3.1 million gift from Gordon Gould '41, of Southampton, N.Y., the inventor of the laser.
A previous gift of $1.5 million from Gould established the R. Gordon Gould Professorship of Physics in 1995. The
professorship, which is held by Jay E. Newman, was established to honor Frank
Studer, a former professor of physics at the College who sparked Gould's
interest in the physics of light and inspired a love of optics that led to
Gould's development of the laser.
President Roger Hull, announcing the most recent gift, said, “Union is incredibly fortunate to have the support – again – of Gordon Gould. As the inventor of the laser, Gordon has had an impact on all of us; as one of Union's strongest supporters, Gordon will long have an impact on generations of students.”
Gould, who idolized Thomas A. Edison as a child and always wanted to be an inventor, was a physics major and member of Sigma Chi fraternity at Union. He did graduate research in optics at Yale, where he taught physics to premed students, and was a doctoral student and research assistant at Columbia when he developed the basic concept of the laser process. Working throughout a weekend, he filled the
pages of a notebook with descriptions of ways to amplify light and use the
resulting beam to cut and heat substances and measure distance. To describe the process, he coined the word laser, standing for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.”
A few weeks after filling his notebook with ideas, he went to an attorney and came away believing – erroneously – that he needed a working model before he could get a patent. He did not submit a patent application until April, 1959 – after two other men had filed an application.
Legal battles began, and finally, in 1977, the patent office awarded Gould a patent on optically pumped laser amplifiers. During the next ten years he won a series of other legal victories that left him in control of patent rights to an estimated ninety percent of the lasers used and sold in the United States. He is now
acknowledged as the pioneer of the laser, and he was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991. Union recognized Gould's achievements by awarding him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1978 and the Eliphalet Nott Medal in 1995.
Gould devoted much of his career to research in optics and, in 1973, was a cofounder of an optical communications company named Optelecom, Inc., where he earned further patents before retiring in 1985. Since then, he has advised a gem and precious jewel communications company and six other ventures in which he has invested.