 and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1959 and 1961, respectively.Patel joined Bell Laboratories in 1961, and subsequently became Executive Director of the Research, Materials Science, Engineering and Academic Affairs Division at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he developed the carbon dioxide laser.Patel's discovery, in 1963, of the laser action on the vibrational-rotational transitions of carbon dioxide and his discovery, in 1964, of efficient vibrational energy transfer between molecules, led to a series of experiments which demonstrated that the carbon dioxide laser was capable of very high continuous-wave and pulsed power output at very high conversion efficiencies.