Eugene Lang

Eugene Michael Lang (March 16, 1919 – April 8, 2017) was an American businessman and philanthropist who founded REFAC Technology Development Corporation in 1951. REFAC held patents relating to liquid crystal displays, automated teller machines, credit card verification systems, bar code scanners, video cassette recorders, cassette players, camcorders, electronic keyboards, and spreadsheets, and filed thousands of lawsuits against other corporations as part of a strategic operational and technological licensing and exportation process. Lang created the I Have A Dream Foundation in 1981, Project Pericles in 2001, and the Lang Youth Medical Program in 2003. He was also the chairman of the board at Swarthmore College.





== Life and career ==

Lang was born in 1919 in New York City, the son of Ida (née Kaslow) and Daniel Lang, Jewish immigrants from Russia and Hungary. He attended public schools including Townsend Harris High School. At the age of 15 he was admitted as a scholarship student to Swarthmore College, and received a B.A. in economics in 1938. He then received an M.S. from Columbia Business School in 1940. He studied mechanical engineering at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute from 1940 to 1941. He was married to Theresa (née Volmar) Lang from 1946 until her death in 2008.