Gordon Gould '41, the laser pioneer who established a professorship to honor the physics professor who sparked his interest in the physics of light, died on Sept. 16. He was 85.
“Just as Gordon Gould made an immeasurable difference in the lives of millions worldwide, he made an important difference for Union College,” said James Underwood, interim president. “The College is indeed fortunate to have been associated with – and supported by – one of science's most brilliant stars.”
Gould, who coined the ubiquitous term “laser” (for “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation”), fought a three-decade battle to secure patent rights for the invention he began in 1957 as a graduate student at Columbia University.
After a weekend of filling his notebook with ideas to amplify light, 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 others had filed an application.
Finally, in 1987, the patent office awarded Gould a patent on optically pumped laser amplifiers. “If I had any idea when I started how long it would take to win, I would have quit a long time ago,” he once said. “But throughout the whole fight it always seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel was just around the corner.”
Gould, who as a child idolized Thomas A. Edison 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. He worked on the Manhattan Project from 1943 to 1945.
Acknowledged as the pioneer of the laser, he was elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1991. Union recognized his achievements by awarding him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1978 and the Eliphalet Nott Medal in 1995.
In 1995, he established the R. Gordon Gould Professorship of Physics, held by Jay E. Newman, to honor Frank Studer, Gould's former Union professor of physics.
Gould was the subject of a 2002 biography, Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War by Nick Taylor. The book chronicles Gould's disputed claim to be the true inventor of the laser and the 30-year battle that secured his patent rights.
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 advised a gem and precious jewel communications company and six other ventures in which he had invested.
Survivors include his wife, Marilyn Appel and several nieces and nephews.