Who's This? A kid-hating villain.
The facts: Arthur Light first appeared in Justice League of America #12 (June 1962) and was created by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. From there he would become a recurring JLA and Teen Titans villain, spend a short amount of time in the Suicide Squad (where he dies, impermanently).
How you could have heard of him: Identity Crisis turns him, retroactively, into a rapist and from then on, the character is both infamous and tainted. Some later appearances play into it (and are distasteful), others ignore it (but we can't stand the sight of him anyway). I almost skipped right over him in this article series. It's that bad.
Example story: Teen Titans #44 (November 1978) "The Man Who Toppled the Titans" by Paul Levitz, Bob Rozakis, Pablo Marcos and Bob Smith
Back in those halcyon days when Dr. Light was merely a villain who committed violence against teenage heroes... or rather, he's about to start hating teenagers as we're looking at his first entanglement with the Titans. As he did to the JLA in their title's 122nd issue, Light has lured the Titans (not currently enjoying a full membership) to their own HQ with a false alarm. Caught flat-footed, they don't do very well on the first page of their encounter.
A lot of different tricks and aside from the dated costume, you'd think this guy had the chops to be an A-class villain. Speedy slams him with a mirror arrow impervious to his light powers, but it doesn't turn the tide, mostly because the Titans exhibit poor teamwork and get in each other's way. He manages to escape having captured Robin and Wonder Girl.
In his hidden lair later, Arthur exposes the two heroes to his "liar-light", which causes pain to anyone who lies under interrogation. He still considers himself a JLA villain and wants the kids to dish out the info on their mentors and the satellite's defenses. In the context of Identity Crisis, this is all very gross.
The plan, actually, is to shoot a high-powered laser at the JLA Satellite and destroy it, after luring the League to it using the Titans. But first he needs to eliminate Kid-Flash and Speedy lest they call their mentors (he doesn't care about Mal, which I'm sure will turn out to be a mistake). Wally, he shoots in the back (light is just ever so slightly faster than Kid-Flash), and Speedy in the front with a "shaft of hard light" (ugh). He heads to the Satellite with his four captives, even waylays the Flash who was on monitor duty, but, yep, Mal makes his debut as the Guardian, wearing an exoskeleton and the Golden Age Guardian's shield and helmet.
In "his place"? Dude.
You can kind of see the moment where Dr. Light starts to REALLY hate kids. A couple punches more and he's out... like a light. That this became the start of a recurring theme in his life, and would become a life-defining joke (as if he was the only adult villain to fall to the Titans, I mean, really) is unfortunate, because on the face of it, he had the powers, know-how and ambition to take them (but for the unknown element) and the JLA.
And my fears were indeed realized. It's hard to read even stories from a simpler time and not see creepy double-entendres into them. ID Crisis really did ruin the character. Can his namesake save the IP?
Who's Next? A hero in Crisis.
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