James Power Gordon (March 20, 1928 – June 21, 2013) was an American physicist known for his work in the fields of optics and quantum electronics.

His contributions include the design, analysis and construction of the first maser in 1954 as a doctoral student at Columbia University under the supervision of C. H. Townes, development of the quantal equivalent of Shannon's information capacity formula in 1962, development of the theory for the diffusion of atoms in an optical trap (together with A. Ashkin) in 1980, and the discovery of what is now known as the Gordon-Haus effect in soliton transmission, together with H. A. Haus in 1986.

In 1949, he received a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and joined the physics department of Columbia University as a graduate student.

Starting in 1955 and until his retirement in 1996, Gordon worked as a scientist at AT&T Bell-Laboratories, where in the period between 1958 and 1980 he headed the Quantum Electronics Research Department, located initially in Murray Hill and later in Holmdel Township, both in the state of New Jersey.

[6] This work produced the first prototype of what later evolved into the laser (originally called "optical maser") and became one of the most important workhorses in 20th-century technology.

[10] He pointed out the main effects of quantization and conjectured the quantum equivalent of Shannon's formula for the information capacity of a channel.

After his retirement, Gordon re-engaged with the topic of quantum information and his last paper on the subject, titled "Communication and Measurement", was published on arxiv one year after his death.

[14] Having joined Arthur Ashkin's efforts of manipulating microparticles with laser beams, Gordon wrote the first theory describing radiation forces and momenta in dielectric media.

[17] In a seminal 1986 paper, Gordon explained and formulated the theory of the soliton self-frequency shift that had been observed prior to that in experiments.

His paper, coauthored with H. Kogelnik, appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the formulation presented therein became standard in many of the subsequent texts dealing with polarization phenomena in optical fibers.