[visionlist] John Lott Brown 1924-2011

[David Williams]

Sadly, John Lott (Jack) Brown died January 16, 2011 at the age of 86 
after a long illness.Jack was born in Philadelphia in 1924. He received 
his BS in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 
1945 and his MA in psychology from Temple University in 1949.He received 
the Ph.D degree in Psychology from Columbia University in 1952 under the 
mentorship of Clarence Graham. In 1954, he was named head of the 
psychology division in the Aviation Medical Acceleration Laboratory at 
the Naval Air Development Center while simultaneously serving as an 
assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.He 
helped train astronauts in the early days of the US space program, 
specializing in characterizing visual performance under conditions of 
high acceleration. In 1959, he joined the faculty of the University of 
Pennsylvania Medical School and in 1962 was named director of the 
graduate training program in psychology. He held positions at the 
University of Freiburg, Germany and at Kansas State University before 
coming to the Psychology Department at the University of Rochester in 
1969.  He was director of the Center for Visual Science from 1971-1977 
taking the helm from Bob Boynton who founded the Center in 1963. As 
director, Jack was especially adept at steering young researchers toward 
the scientific problems that captured both their interest and their 
strengths. He also was very effective at garnering resources for the 
Center, equipping it with the latest technology of the time. During this 
period, he was regarded as the most influential vision scientist at the 
interface between academia and the US military and space communities.  
Jack had legendary prowess in administration and in 1977, he left 
Rochester to serve as president of the University of South Florida in 
Tampa.By the time he stepped down in 1988, USF had established a medical 
school, an engineering college and a cancer center. That same decade, 
the school increased its research funding to $23 million from $14.7 
million and boosted its enrollment to more than 30,000 students. Jack's 
research interests included the broad field of human performance, but 
especially visual sensitivity and dark adaptation, which he studied 
using psychophysical and electrophysiological techniques. Jack is also 
well known for the several chapters he contributed to the influential 
book "Vision and Visual Perception" edited by Graham and published in 
1965. He is survived by his wife, Katie (Hertfelder), and four children 
and six grandchildren. Jack and Katie have resided in Oberlin Ohio in 
recent years.

David Williams
Director, Center for Visual Science

-- 
___________________________________
David R. Williams
Director, Center for Visual Science
William G. Allyn Professor of Medical Optics
University of Rochester
Box 270270
Rochester, New York 14627-0270
TEL 585 275-8672, FAX 585 271-3043

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://visionscience.com/pipermail/visionlist/attachments/20110126/f8660e79/attachment-0001.html>