High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Samuel E. Blum (born August 28, 1920) is an American chemist and physicist. He was a researcher at the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, working for government and private companies. He worked with semiconductor materials, which was his specialization until his retirement from IBM Watson Research Center in 1990. Among his 11 patents, the patent on ultraviolet excimer laser, which is used in surgical and dental procedures was a significant contribution to the development of LASIK eye surgery. For this innovation, he was inducted to the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2002) and received the R.W. Wood Prize (2004) from the Optical Society of America (OSA).