Herbert Gresser of Dix Hills, 81, dies

Herbert David Gresser of Dix Hills was not your average polymath.

Enlisting in the Army after the Korean War, he worked on a system for measuring nuclear fallout from the atomic bomb. As a civilian, he earned patents for devising high-tech inventions, helping pioneer laser applications. He ran his own business and knew phrases in about seven languages.

And he devoted nights and weekends to leading a band playing jazz and other forms of music at bar mitzvahs, weddings and concert halls on Long Island, performing under the stage name Hal Leonard.

Gresser, a physicist, inventor and professional musician, died Oct. 21 of a stroke. He was 81.

"Herb Gresser was a father, a friend, an inventor and a doer," said Mark Gresser of Mount Sinai, Herbert Gresser's oldest son and a podiatrist. "He was a confidante and a renowned entertainer, literate, well-read. He was a renaissance man."

Gresser was born in Pittsburgh in August 1930 but moved to New York City soon after that and lived in Brooklyn and then the Flushing area of Queens. He graduated from Bayside High School and then earned a degree in physics from Queens College. He also attended what became Polytechnic Institute of New York University, where he earned a master's degree.

He enlisted in the Army in 1953, just after the Korean War, and put his science background to work as a chemical lab specialist while stationed at the Army Chemical Center in Edgewood, Md. He helped devise a system for measuring particle size and radiation in nuclear fallout.

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Soon after discharge, Gresser met Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who ran the Manhattan Project, which produced the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan during World War II.

He remained in the Army reserves until 1961, five years after he had married the former Adele Davidson.

The young family settled in Plainview and lived there for 30 years. Two other children, Nina and Daniel, would follow Mark.

Herbert Gresser's career in the high-tech industry exploded: He was part of and led teams that produced patented equipment and procedures that advanced the use of lasers.

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He is known as principal inventor of the first laser-based surgical device, the retinal photocoagulator, using coherent light radiation from a laser. He also invented a system for inscribing diamonds with a laser and a system for creating cleavage planes in crystals with a laser.

He worked at several companies on Long Island and New Jersey and he even branched out on his own for a while. He retired in 1991.

But even as a teenager, he had a knack for using the other side of his brain. He developed a love for tuba, string bass and bass guitar and, for most of his life, he performed at local venues and with various bands, including the North Shore Pops Concert Band, the North Winds Concert Band, the Huntington Community Band and C.W. Post Concert Band.

He was a member of civic and veterans organizations, including serving as commander of the Jewish War Veterans of Nassau-Suffolk and as a Democratic committeeman in Huntington, a political role he embraced with relish.

"He was brilliant and always looking to make trouble," said Adele Gresser, his wife.

Gresser is survived by his three children -- Mark; a daughter, Nina Gresser-Tacetta of Stony Brook; a son, Daniel of West Hills; and a sister, Maxine Levine of East Meadow; and seven grandchildren.

Services were held Monday at Calverton National Cemetery.