Gordon Gould, 85; Physicist Finally Got His Due for the Laser
LA Times
Gordon Gould, the prolific physicist who was widely credited with inventing the laser in a caffeine- and nicotine-fueled weekend in 1957, then spent 30 years persuading federal courts to uphold his patents on a device that has now become ubiquitous, died Friday at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He was 85 and suffered from emphysema resulting from years of smoking.
Derided as an “attic inventor” with a “candy-store patent,” Gould was forced to sit on the sidelines when Charles H. Townes shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with two Russian physicists for developments that led to the laser. Gould had the last laugh when he received patents on the device that brought him more than $30 million in royalties.
Gould was a physics graduate student at Columbia University in November 1957, living off his wife’s income while finishing up his thesis, when he conceived the laser in a late-night flash of inspiration. He spent the weekend laboriously compiling nine pages of calculations in his laboratory notebook, then had the foresight to have the work notarized at a neighborhood candy store.
