Awards Banquet

The Awards Banquet dinner will be held  on Thursday, October 9, 2008 between the hours of 1900h and 2200h. The location is Il Ciocco Resort.  All registrants are entitled to attend the Awards Banquet.  If you plan to attend the banquet, please indicate so on the registration form by ticking the  "Complimentary Banquet Ticket" box. The Jerlov Award and the Student Paper Award will be presented at the dinner. However, additional Guest tickets must be booked in advance when submitting your registration.

Invited Speaker

Charles Falco is a Professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona where he holds the UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Optical Society of America, has published more than 250 scientific manuscripts, most of which are related to various physical properties of thin film materials, co-edited two books, has seven U.S. patents, and has given more than 200 invited talks on his research at conferences and research institutions in some 20 countries.  However, in addition to his scientific research, in 1998 he was co-recipient of an award from the AICA for his work as co-curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum's "The Art of the Motorcycle," for which he also wrote the exhibition catalog's introductory essay and bibliography.  With over 2 million visitors thus far in New York, Chicago, Bilbao, and the Guggenheim Las Vegas, it is by far the most successful exhibition of industrial design ever assembled, and is the 5th most attended museum exhibition of any kind.  More recently, a collaboration with the artist David Hockney that found artists of such repute as van Eyck, Bellini and Caravaggio used optical projections in creating portions of their work has resulted in widespread coverage in the popular media, including an hour-long BBC special and a segment on CBS '60 Minutes', and over 100 invited talks and public lectures on this topic in twelve countries.

ABSTRACT

THE SCIENCE OF OPTICS; THE HISTORY OF ART

Charles M. Falco, College of Optical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson

Recently, renowned artist David Hockney observed that certain drawings and paintings from as early as the Renaissance seemed almost "photographic" in detail.  Following an extensive visual investigation of western art of the past 1000 years, he made the revolutionary claim that artists even of the prominence of van Eyck and Bellini must have used optical aids.  However, many art historians insisted there was no supporting evidence for such a remarkable assertion.  In this talk I show a wealth of optical evidence for his claim that Hockney and I subsequently discovered during an unusual, and remarkably productive, collaboration between an artist and a scientist.  I also discuss the imaging properties of the "mirror lens" (concave mirror), and some of the implications this work has for the history of science as well as the history of art (and the modern fields of machine vision and computerized image analysis).  These discoveries convincingly demonstrate optical instruments were in use -- by artists, not scientists -- nearly 200 years earlier than commonly thought possible, and account for the remarkable transformation in the reality of portraits that occurred early in the 15th century. (for more information see http://www.optics.arizona.edu/ssd/FAQ.html)

Acknowledgments:  This work was done in collaboration with David Hockney.  We gratefully acknowledge David Graves (London), Ultan Guilfoyle (Guggenheim), Martin Kemp (Oxford U.), Masud Mansuripur (U. Arizona), José Sasián (U. Arizona), Richard Schmidt (Los Angeles), and Lawrence Weschler (The New Yorker) for a variety of valuable contributions to our efforts.

 The Jerlov Award

http://www.tos.org/awards_honors/jerlov_award.html


Awarded in recognition of contribution made to the advancement of our knowledge of the nature and consequences of light in the ocean.

Nils Gunnar Jerlov was an early leader in the area of ocean optics research. His name is recognized widely within the entire international oceanographic research community. His theoretical and experimental work on ocean optical and related processes helped form the foundation of modern ocean optical research. He proposed the concept of an optical ocean water mass classification and the Jerlov water types are familiar to many outside of the ocean optics community. His book, Marine Optics, published in 1976 remains widely referenced and is considered required reading for all students of ocean optics and ocean color remote sensing.

The Oceanography Society (TOS) commemorates Dr. Jerlov and his many contributions to the study of light in the ocean with an international award, established in his name, to recognize outstanding achievements in ocean optics and ocean color remote sensing research. This award is issued biennially. It consists of a bronze medallion, a lapel pin, and a cash award of $1000. The medallion and lapel pin was designed by Judith Munk and was unveiled for the first time at Ocean Optics XV.

A selection committee organized by TOS seeks out nominations and selects the winner from the nominees. The nominee's work must deal directly with the processes governing the interaction of light with the ocean and/or the consequences of such interactions. The award recognizes research (theoretical or applied, field-based or laboratory-based, a landmark paper or lifetime achievement), a pattern of excellence in education, a history of service to the international ocean optics research community or contributions in all areas. In the end, the nominated individual must have significantly advanced our knowledge of how light interacts with the ocean.

Previous Award Winners

2006: J.Ronald V. Zaneveld, WET Labs, Inc., Philomath, Oregon, U.S.A.

2004: Howard R. Gordon, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA

2002: Raymond C. Smith, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, USA

2000: André Morel, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Villefranche sur Mer, France