Optica mourns the passing of these distinguished colleagues.
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Nick Holonyak Jr., Optica Honorary Member and Frederic Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize recipient, passed away on 18 September 2022 at the age of 93. Holonyak was a pioneer in optoelectronics and credited with the development of the first practical visible-spectrum LED. His research led to the use of LED in light bulbs, device displays and lasers.Holonyak was born in Zeigler, Illinois. His parents
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Mathew Alpern, recipient of the Edgar T. Tillyer Award (1974) and Physiologist, passed away on 16 May 1996 at the age of 75. He is most known for his research on color vision and color blindness.Alpern was born in Akron, Ohio on 22 September 1920. He received his Doctor of Optometry degree in 1941 from the Northern Illinois College of Optometry (now the Illinois College of Optometry). He spent a
Friday, August 5, 2022
Robert William Ditchburn, Optica Fellow (1965) and recipient of the C. E. K. Mees Medal, passed away on 8 April 1987 at the age of 84. He was known for his work on photo-ionization, solids' optical properties, eye movements' effect on the on visual perception. His research which led to the development and application of methods to stabilize images on the retina will have a lasting impact
Monday, July 11, 2022
Richard F. Weeks, Optica Fellow (1981) and recipient of the David Richardson Medal (1980) passed away in Grinnell, Iowa on 11 July 2022 at the age of 90. He was most known for heading the team at Polaroid that designed the optics for the iconic Polaroid SX-70, the world’s first folding single-lens reflex camera.Weeks was born 1 June 1932 in Schenectady, NY where he graduated from
Sunday, July 3, 2022
Robert Floyd Curl, Jr., physical chemist and Optica Fellow (1995), passed away on 3 July 2022 at the age of 88 in Houston, Texas. Curl was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1996 along with his colleagues, Harry Kroto and Richard Smalley, for the discovery of the nanomaterial buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyball,” previously an unrecognized form of carbon.Curl was born in Alice
Thursday, June 16, 2022
Gabriel Popescu, Optica Fellow (2015) and Senior Member (2010) passed away on 16 June 2022 in Prundu, Romania. He was most known for directing the Quantitative Light Imaging Laboratory (QLI Lab) at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, developing biophotonics methods for application in biomedicine and quantitative histopathology to detect breast cancer and label-free tissue
Sunday, June 12, 2022
James B. Breckinridge, Optica Fellow (1978) and former Board member, passed away on 12 June 2022 at the age of 83. He was known for his work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he held several positions, such as an instrument scientist for the Atmospheric Trace Molecule Spectroscopy (ATMOS) experiment, founding manager of the JPL Optics Division, and chief technologist for the NASA
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
Kurt Bernardo Wolf Bogner, Optica Fellow (2022) passed away on 25 May 2022 in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He was most known for his work in mathematical physics, in particular for the development of group theory in symmetry and its application to fundamental problems in quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, atomic, molecular and optical physics (AMO). Wolf was also the first director of what is now the
Thursday, May 5, 2022
David Larry Fried, Optica Fellow (1970) and pioneer in electro-optics, passed away on 5 May 2022 in Monterey, California at the age of 89. He was known for his contributions to electro-optics, and most notably the Fried parameter, or r0 (r-naught or r-zero), which measures the strength of turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere.Fried was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish immigrant
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Kenneth MacClure “Mac” Baird, Optica Past President (1983) and recipient of the C.E.K. Mees Medal (1989), passed away peacefully at this home in Ottawa on 18 April 2022. Baird was known for his contributions to standards research and optical metrology, particularly measurements that led to a new definition of the international meter. Baird was born in China in 1923