"The laser is one of the remarkable inventions of all time, with virtually endless uses in communications, technology, and medicine. Even more remarkable is how it was invented-by an obscure Columbia University graduate student who had already spent years unsuccessfully working on his Ph.D. This is the story of Gordon Gould, who invented the laser and gave it its name, and then had to fight a prominent, Noble Prize-winning physicist to claim the rights to his invention, a fight that lasted thirty years.