Chandra Kumar Naranbhai Patel is an electrical engineer. He developed the carbon dioxide laser in 1963. it is now widely used in industry for cutting and welding, as a laser scalpel in surgery, and in laser skin resurfacing. Because the atmosphere is quite transparent to infrared light, CO2 lasers are also used for military rangefinding using LIDAR techniques. C. Kumar N. Patel was born in Baramati, India on 2 July 1938. He received the B.E. from the College of Engineering in Poona, India and the M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1959 and 1961, respectively. He is the inventor of the carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and the Spin-Flip Raman lasers. He pioneered the use of these and other lasers to measure trace gases in difficult environments. He was at AT&T Bell Laboratories for thirty-two years and was Executive Director of the Physics Division and of the Materials Research Division. From 1993 to 1999 he was the Vice Chancellor for Research at UCLA. Dr. Patel was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1974 and the National Academy of Engineering in 1978. He received the National Medal of Science given by the President of the United States in 1996. In recognition of the CO2 laser's importance to the medical field, he has been elected as an Honorary Member of the Gynecologic Laser Surgery Society in 1980 and in 1985 he was elected an Honorary Member of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery.