Richard Osgood, Jr.

Richard “Rick” Osgood Jr. was the Higgins Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics at Columbia University, where he spent more than four decades as a pioneer in laser science, surface chemistry, and photonics. He joined Columbia’s faculty in 1981 and was named Higgins Professor in 1988. He created and directed Columbia’s Microelectronics Sciences Laboratories, designed the university’s first shared clean-room fabrication facility, and co-directed the Columbia Radiation Laboratory. In 1995, his research group created the photonic design software RSoft, which became the foundation of a successful startup. He also served as associate director of energy sciences at Brookhaven National Laboratory (2000–2002). In 1991, he received the Optical Society of America’s R.W. Wood Prize for the invention of laser photochemical deposition. He trained 67 doctoral students over his career and was a fellow of the Optical Society, the American Physical Society, and the IEEE. He was a graduate of West Point, earned an M.S. in physics from Ohio State University, and received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT under Ali Javan.