Page:Journal of the Optical Society of America, volume 33, number 7.pdf/71

 by Kodak researchers of the first new optical glass discovered since the 1880's, and this was subsequently adopted for manufacturing purposes by the Eastman Kodak Company.

LARENCE ERROL FERREE was born in Sidney, Ohio, March 11, 1877. He received the degrees of B.S., M.A., and M.S. from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1900 and 1901; of Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1909; and of D.Sc. (hon.) from Ohio Wesleyan in 1938. From 1907 to 1928 he was a member of the Faculty of Bryn Mawr College, serving as Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology 1912-1917 and Professor 1917-1928. He was also Director of the Psychological Laboratory 1912-1928 and succeeded in building up a very active department of his chosen subject in those pioneer days, creating among his students a group of able and enthusiastic researchers. His early interests lay in the fields of attention, audition, and vision, but in later years he devoted himself almost entirely to the last-named field, extending his scientific studies to their applications in ophthalmology and lighting. From 1928-1935 he was Director of the Laboratory of Physiological Optics, Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and held the additional title of Adjunct Professor of Physiological Optics. Forced by poor health to retire from active service in 1935, he was able to continue research, writing, and consultation work from his private laboratory. His sudden death of coronary occlusion occurred at his home on July 26, 1942. He is survived by his wife and collaborator, Dr. Gertrude Rand.

Ferree was an intensive worker, publishing more than 250 articles. He possessed a constructive and inventive mind, and it may be fairly said that his chief interest in teaching and research lay in the development of methods and the devising of apparatus to carry out these methods. In 1911, in collaboration with Gertrude Rand, he was the first to use stimuli, whose physical energy was directly measured, in the study of visual processes and the determination of sensitivities in any part of the retina. Various spectro-radiometric instruments were devised for this work and a number of quantitative studies were made under his direction using this technique. Among these instruments is a quantitative color-mixer with which 2, 3, or 4 spectrum colors can be mixed and the energy of the colors used and of the mixture can be measured. He was also one of the first to recognize the need for a systematic study of light and lighting in relation to the eye, and the first to show by test, in 1912, that one system of lighting is better than another for the eye. His many studies on lighting in relation to the comfort and hygiene of the eye culminated in the devising of a series of glareless lighting units and devices, prominent among which are the FerreeRand hospital ward light used in leading hospitals throughout the country, the louvered direct-indirect type of fixture in current use, and the Ferree-Rand variable illuminator. He invented also a number of optical and ophthalmological instruments. Also may be mentioned his studies on the light and color sense, central and peripheral; normal and pathologic perimetry and scotometry; theory of flicker photometry in relation to the rise of visual sensation; the refraction of the peripheral retina; visual acuity and the construction of a standard visual acuity and astigmatism test chart for testing and rating vision; and dynamic speed of vision in testing fitness for aviation and for general and ocular fatigue—another of the researches conducted during the last war and for which the multiple-exposure tachistoscope was constructed. Ferree was the holder of 12 U. S. patents.

Ferree’s work was aptly summed up in the following citation by Acting-President Edward L. Rice on the occasion of the award of the degree of Doctor of Science by Ohio Wesleyan University: “By your intensive theoretical study you have brought light into the borderland where physics, physiology, and psychology meet; by the application of your studies in practical invention you have aided oculists and opticians to bring light to defective eyesight.” —

ANS GEORG BEUTLER was born in Reichenbach, Germany in 1896. He received his Ph.D. in 1922 at the University of Greifswald. From 1923 to 1933 he was associated with Dr. F. Haber at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry. From 1930 to 1936 he was Privat-dozent and Dozent at the University of Berlin. From 1936 to 1937 he was Research Physicist and Lecturer at the University of Michigan, and from 1937 on, Research Associate in Physics at the University of Chicago. He devoted the years from 1923 to 1927 to problems of highly diluted flames, from 1927 to 1932 to elementary processes of atoms and molecules, and, perhaps his most important work, from 1932 to 1936, to the inner spectra of atoms. While at Ryerson Laboratory he developed a generalized theory of the concave grating, a masterly and exhaustive treatment leaving little to be added in detail. He also spent a great deal of time improving the performance of the 30-foot grating spectrograph. Much other equipment at Ryerson bears the stamp of his expert direction. All his research was exhaustive in detail; he could bear with nothing short of completeness, accuracy, precision. At the time of his death he was finishing, in collaboration with R. A. Sawyer, a much needed volume on spectroscopic technique. During the short time he was with us, his comprehensive knowledge of spectroscopy was freely and courteously at the disposal of everyone. His early death is a serious loss to the field of spectroscopy. He was a member of Sigma Xi, the Optical Society of America, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

H. ANTHES, manager of the New York Branch of the Bausch & Lomb Optical Company since 1933, died on August 3, 1942 following a short illness. He had been associated with the company for 33 years. Prior to