Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/gordon-gould-85-f...
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
Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/gordon-gould-85-f...
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 1958. 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 1953.
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
Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/gordon-gould-85-f...
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
Gordon Gould, 85, Figure in Invention of the Laser, Dies - The...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/gordon-gould-85-f...
© 2015 The New York Times Company
4 of 4
8/9/15, 2:02 PM
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/charles-h-townes-physic...
http://nyti.ms/15TvcbG
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
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/charles-h-townes-physic...
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 1960.
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
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/charles-h-townes-physic...
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 1939.
He joined Bell Laboratories in 1939 at its Murray Hill, N.J., headquarters and
3 of 5
9/7/15, 1:47 PM
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/charles-h-townes-physic...
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 1986. 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
Charles H. Townes, Who Paved Way for the Laser in Daily Life...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/29/us/charles-h-townes-physic...
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 1953. 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.
© 2015 The New York Times Company
5 of 5
9/7/15, 1:47 PM