James M Forsyth received his BS in 1964 and Ph.D. in 1968 from the University of Rochester Institute of Optics. He worked in the Laboratory of Laser Energetics there until 1983 when he started his own company. He remained in Rochester, New York. In 1974, Forsyth received OSA’s Adolph Lomb Medal, which recognized many areas of his work, including the discovery of self-phase locking of argon-laser modes, contributions to transverse mode stabilization and locking and to the design of a method for obtaining single-frequency operation of an argon-ion laser, his work in highpower C02-laser design and with stimulated emission at x-ray wavelengths from laser produced plasmas, and finally, for his innovative work in educational programs in optical science and engineering. He was also a Fellow of OSA.