In the late 1950s, the race was on among American scientists to build the first light-amplification machine, or laser. Several developers, working independently, conducted experiments based on Charles Townes's early research, culminating with Theodore Maiman 's working model in 1960. The theories of Gordon Gould predated Maiman's work by several years, and it is Gould who, after many years, is now recognized as the true inventor of the laser.

Born in 1920 in New York City, Gould earned his undergraduate degree in physics from Union College in Schenectady, New York and later received his master's from Yale. Like many scientists of his time, Gould worked for the government during World War II, remaining in New York to participate in the Manhattan Project with the scientists developing the atomic bomb. After the war, he went back to school to pursue his Ph .D. at Columbia.

It was here, while studying for...