Gertrude Neumark Rothschild,whose research helped improve light-emitting and laser diodes now used in many cellphones,flat-screen televisions and Blu-ray disc players,and who waged a successful patent-infringement battle against some of the world's biggest electronics companies that yielded tens of millions of dollars in settlements and licensing fees,died on Nov.11 in Rye,N.Y.She was 83.
Enlarge This Image
Columbia University Gertrude Neumark Rothschild,professor of materials science and engineering.
Add to Portfolio Nokia Oyj Sony Corporation Hitachi Ltd Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV Go to your Portfolio»
The cause was heart failure,her lawyer,Diana D.Parker,said.Professor Rothschild lived in Hartsdale,N.Y.
In the 1980s,Professor Rothschild,who taught materials science and engineering at Columbia University,began studying the optical properties of wide bandgap semiconductors and developed diodes capable of using the upper range of the spectrum and serving as a superior light source.
This was an important breakthrough.The new short-wavelength LEDs,which emit blue,green,violet and ultraviolet light,were much more energy efficient,reliable and long-lived.Short-wavelength-emitting laser diodes could store vastly more information more compactly.
The new technology lent itself to a wide variety of applications,from billboards and traffic lights to hand-held mobile devices and high-definition DVD players.
"The timing of my patent applications was very lucky,"she told the journal Nature Photonics in 2008."At around the same time,Japanese researchers verified experimentally what I had proposed theoretically."
In 2005,Professor Rothschild(who was known on the Columbia campus as Professor Neumark)filed a lawsuit against several electronics companies,including the Philips Lumileds Lighting Company,Epistar,Toyoda Gosei and Osram,accusing them of infringing on two of her semiconductor patents.
The move was generally regarded as quixotic,but Professor Rothschild prevailed.One by one,nearly all the companies signed licensing agreements with her.
The money she received in settlements allowed her to pursue an even more ambitious defense of her patents.In 2008 she filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission against 34 electronics companies,including giants like Sony,Nokia and Hitachi,for possible infringement of her 1993 patent"'Wide Band-Gap Semiconductors Having Low Bipolar Resistivity and Method of Formation.""I just want recognition for the work that I did,and I want to show that women can do science,"she told Nature Photonics.
After the commission agreed to hear the case,and Professor Rothschild brought a complaint against a second list of companies,the companies settled and she withdrew the complaints.In all,she wrested$27 million in settlements and licensing fees from more than 40 companies,her former lawyer,Albert Jacobs Jr.,told the newsletter Law 360 in August.
Gertrude Fanny Neumark was born on April 29,1927,in Nuremberg,Germany.Her family,which was Jewish,fled Germany in 1935 and made its way to the United States.
After receiving a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Barnard College in 1948,she earned a master's in chemistry from Radcliffe in 1949 and a doctorate from Columbia in 1951.
Much of her early career was spent in private industry,working as a physicist for Sylvania Research Laboratories in Bayside,Queens,and a senior researcher at Philips Laboratories in Briarcliff Manor,N.Y.It was at Philips that she first became interested in the semiconductor research.She continued that work at Columbia,where she became a professor of materials science in 1985 and also a professor of applied physics in 1998.In 1999 she was named the Howe professor of materials science and engineering.
In 2008,Philips Electronics,whose Lumileds division she had sued,created a professorship in her honor in Columbia's department of applied physics and applied mathematics,part of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science.
She is survived by her husband,Henry Rothschild.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction:November 22,2010
An obituary on Thursday about Gertrude Neumark Rothschild,whose research helped improve light-emitting and laser diodes,referred incorrectly at one point to the legal action she successfully took against several electronics companies.She accused them of patent infringement,not copyright infringement.
