[visionlist] Tom Cornsweet (1929-2017)

[John Perrone]

Thank you Jack for your original piece and to all the others who have
shared their thoughts and memories about Tom Cornsweet on CVNet. Tom's
daughter (Carrie) is in the School of Psychology here with me at the
University of Waikato (New Zealand) working in the Clinical area and I have
been forwarding her a lot of the messages about her father from the vision
community.  She has very much appreciated hearing the tributes and
acknowledgements of the high esteem held by her father in his field.
Carrie is very grateful and is collecting these messages to pass onto her
own children.

Thanks again to all those who have contributed,

-John Perrone

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:50 AM, Jack Yellott <jyellott at uci.edu> wrote:

>
> Vision scientists will be sorry to learn that Tom Cornsweet died on
> November 11 2017, at age 88, in Prescott Arizona, his home for many years.
> His death followed a long illness and was not unexpected. After earning a
> Ph.D. from Brown in 1955, Tom taught at Yale and the University of
> California, Berkeley, and finally the University of California, Irvine,
> where he held appointments in the departments of Cognitive Sciences,
> Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Ophthalmology. He retired
> from UCI in 1999, but remained active in applied research and development
> on ophthalmic instruments, as he had been throughout his career—his early
> work on eye tracking and image stabilization at the Stanford Research
> Institute (now SRI International) in the 1960s and 70s led eventually in
> 1973 to the first commercially viable automated refracting device, the
> Acuity Systems 6600 Auto-Refractor. Altogether he obtained 40 patents. His
> final official position, from 2013-2015, was Chief Scientist at Brien
> Holden Vision Diagnostics, where he continued to develop ophthalmic
> instruments of his own invention.
>
> In basic vision science Tom is probably best known today for his discovery
> of the remarkable brightness phenomenon known generally as the Cornsweet
> Illusion (or sometimes the Craik O'Brien Cornsweet Illusion, acknowledging
> earlier investigators). He described and analyzed this effect in his
> classic 1970 textbook, Visual Perception, which has always been widely
> regarded as a model of scientific exposition. This is especially true of
> its treatment of color vision—even today it remains arguably the best
> starting point for understanding color matching phenomena—and also for
> clarifying the distinction between visual phenomena, like color matching,
> where genuine scientific explanation is possible, and other phenomena, such
> as color appearance, where the private nature of subjective experience
> makes it unclear how the usual tools of science can be applied. Along with
> scientific hardware—lenses and such—Tom had a great passion for rigor in
> scientific thinking, which he shared (indeed, insisted on) with his
> students (Davida Teller being best known) and colleagues.  Those fortunate
> to work with him always found it a uniquely valuable experience—one is
> tempted to say even ennobling. He will be greatly missed as a scientist and
> as a friend.
>
> Jack Yellott
> Professor Emeritus
> Cognitive Sciences Department
> University of California, Irvine
>
>
>
>
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>
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