Rangaswamy Srinivasan is a physicist and research scientist whose Thanksgiving experiment changed medicine. Working at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, he discovered in 1981 that ultraviolet excimer lasers could remove biological tissue with extraordinary precision and no heat damage, the foundational insight behind LASIK eye surgery. His discovery, made in collaboration with colleagues James Wynne and Samuel Blum, earned him induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2002. More than 40 million Americans have had their vision corrected as a direct result of his work.
