Gary S Duck

Gary S Duck received his M.Sc. in engineering physics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He started his career in the late 1970s at Bell-Northern Research, where he was one of a team of physicists who designed first-generation components for fiber optic systems. In 1981, he and three other co-workers (Jozef Straus, Bill Sinclair and Philip Garel-Jones) co-founded JDS Optics. The company provided the telecom industry with the necessary passive optical components and instruments required for developing optical networks. In 1996, the company merged into JDS Uniphase Inc. and became the world’s largest supplier of a full range of fiber optic hardware.

During his career at JDS Uniphase, Duck held vice president positions and worked on the research, development and manufacture of numerous passive optical components. He specialized in WDM technology, which was one of the keys to meeting the explosive growth in bandwidth requirements demanded by the telecommunications industry in the late 1990s. In 1999, Duck was made a fellow at JDS Uniphase. He retired from JDS Uniphase in 2001 and is currently self-employed at Ventana Management Services in Ottawa.

During his 25-year career in fiber optics, Duck developed or co-developed numerous optical components for the telecom industry. Most were used in the implementation of WDM systems to greatly increase the capacity of optical networks. He was also involved in the manufacture and volume production processes for many of these devices, and the development of generic techniques for improving optical isolation, return loss, directivity and polarization properties of components. He holds more than 40 patents. He received the 2006 David Richardson Medal “for innovation and leadership in the development and manufacture of optical components and instrumentation for the realization of practical and reliable wavelength-division-multiplexed optical fiber telecommunications systems.” He is also a Fellow of Optica.