Laserati

William Bennett, pioneering laser researcher, died from cancer of the esophagus at 78. Via: Boston Global

In 1960, Bennett, Ali Javan and Donald Herriott built the first gas laser, which generated a continuous infrared beam from a mixture of helium and neon, at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. Bennett would go on to develop nearly a dozen additional lasers.
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Bennett became a tenured professor at Yale University in 1962, was named Charles Baldwin Sawyer professor in applied science and physics in 1972 and would spend 38 years at the school, becoming an emeritus professor in 1998 and retiring in 2000.

He is not only a laser physicist. On Yale website:

Professor Bennett was co-inventor of the first gas laser (the helium-neon laser), discovered the argon ion laser, was first to observe spectral hole burning effects in gas lasers, and created a theory of hole burning effects on laser oscillation. He was co-discoverer of lasers using electron impact excitation in each of the noble gases, dissociative excitation transfer in the neon-oxygen laser (the first chemical laser), and collision excitation in several metal vapor lasers. He was one of the first to incorporate the use of computers to teach physics and, with his daughter Dr. Jean Bennett Maguire, devised a method of real-time spectral phonocardiography for the detection and classification of heart murmurs. He set a stringent limit on the existence of “The Fifth Force” and showed that it was improbable that magnetic fields from power lines could cause cancer. Research he did on the physics of musical instruments became the basis of a popular course he gave at Yale. He has written eight books, twelve patents and over 120 research papers. His principal avocation is playing chamber music. He studied the clarinet with Simeon Bellison and has been clarinet soloist with several amateur symphony orchestras.