INVENTORS HALL OF FAME
GouldPatent No. 4,053,845 Gas-Discharge-Excited Light Amplifiers
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Gordon Gould was born July 17, 1920 in New York City. With Edison as his hero, his ambition from childhood was to be an inventor. After studying at Union College in physics and optics, he went on to Yale for graduate work in spectroscopy, receiving an M.S. in Physics in 1943. During the rest of World War II, he worked at the Manhattan Project on the separation of uranium isotopes to generate nuclear power.
Following the war, he continued graduate studies in physics at Columbia University. His study of optical and microwave spectroscopy provided him the necessary background for his original concepts of laser technology.
Gould's first ideas for the laser "came in a flash" one night in 1957. He wrote these down in a notebook entitled "Some Rough Calculations on the Feasibility of a LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation." It was the first use of this acronym for the now familiar name. However, because he misunderstood an attorney's advice, he didn't file for a patent until 1959, after other laser researchers had already filed.
Since Gould's original patent application contained a number of different inventions, it was put through a series of five separate interferences by the Patent Office. Thus, it was not until twenty years later, in 1977, that the first of Gould's basic laser patents was issued. Gould and his assignee, Patlex Corp., now hold the basic patents covering optically pumped and discharge excited laser amplifiers. These lasers are used in 80 percent of the industrial, commercial, and medical applications of lasers. Gould also holds patents on laser uses and fiber optic communications and is the author or co-author of numerous technical papers.
After leaving Columbia University, Gould built up a strong research and development team at Technical Research Group, Inc. Later, he was a Professor of Electro-Physics at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. In 1974, he co-founded Optelecom, Inc. in Gaithersburg, MD, a firm specializing in the then new field of optical telecommunications. He retired from Optelecom in 1985.
His numerous honors include an Honorary D. Sc. from Union College, the Inventor of the Year Award from the Association for the Advancement of Invention and Innovation, the John Scott Medal Award for "The Invention of the Laser," and the Franklin Institute Inventor of the Year.
The above information was supplied by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc., Room 1D01-Crystal Plaza 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway, Arlington, Virginia 22202. Videotapes and printed materials are currently available. For more information, visit the Foundation's web site at http://www.invent.org
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