User talk:73.221.131.116

Hi. I'm not sure if you're still around on this IP address, but I'll leave you a message here in case you are. You might want to create a user account to make it easier for people to communicate with you.

I re-edited the paragraph you changed at Arthur Leonard Schawlow. I'm a fan of Gould's and think he didn't get nearly as much credit as he deserved. Talking about his role in the invention of the laser requires some care, though. Gould is "the inventor" of the laser in a very narrow sense: he was the first to write down the essential theory for how to make a laser and what one could do with it. If he had been treated fairly by the patent office, that should have gotten him the patent on the laser itself, but it didn't because the patent office didn't handle his applications properly. In the sciences, though, credit for a discovery is not given to the first person to write down and notarize an idea, but rather to the first person to publish the work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Within the scientific community, Schawlow and Townes are properly credited as the discoverers of the theory of the laser, because they published their work and Gould did not. By trying to keep his work secret until he could make a working prototype, Gould denied himself scientific credit for his discovery. Maiman, of course, undeniably deserves credit for being the first person to successfully build a working laser.--Srleffler (talk) 17:24, 14 July 2018 (UTC)