Dick Haugland

Richard Paul Haugland (July 17, 1943 – October 5, 2016) was an American scientist noted for his work in researching and commercializing fluorescent dyes. He completed his PhD at Stanford in 1970 under Lubert Stryer, showing in a now widely cited and classic paper that Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) can be used as a "spectroscopic ruler" to measure distances in macromolecules. Haugland founded Molecular Probes in 1975 and continued as its president after the corporation was bought by Invitrogen in 2003. He is the original author of the authoritative volume on molecular probes, The Molecular Probes Handbook, now in its 11th edition.