Page:Journal of the Optical Society of America, volume 33, number 7.pdf/70

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
422

(10) D. E. Spencer, “A metric for colorspace,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. 33, 260 (1943).

(11) D. L. MacAdam, “Visual sensitivities to color differences in daylight,” J. Opt. Soc. Am. 32, 247 (1942).

(12) E. B. Titchener, Outline of Psychology (Macmillan, New York, 1896).

(13) E. G. Boring, H. S. Langfeld, H. P. Weld, and collaborators, Introduction to Psychology (Wiley, New York, 1939).

Necrology

Robert E. Oltman

DR. ROBERT E. OLTMAN, Chief Chemist with the Minnesota Valley Canning Company, died on July 25, 1942, at his home, 517 South Second Street, Le Sueur, Minnesota, as a result of pulmonary embolism. Dr. Oltman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, December 5, 1908, and received most of his education in the East Cleveland schools, graduating from Shaw High School. He was awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree, with major in botany, from Oberlin College in 1932. The following year he went to the University of Minnesota as a teaching assistant in plant physiology and received the Doctor of Philosophy degree there in 1936. Immediately after his graduation he entered the employ of the Minnesota Valley Canning Company and has been with that company ever since. During this time he resided in Le Sueur, with the exception of two years spent in Toronto, Canada, as Director of Research with Fine Foods of Canada, Limited.

Dr. Oltman was a member of Sigma Xi, and was a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Chemistry and a member of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturists, the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Optical Society of America. He leaves a wife, formerly Miss Sophia Ann Krenik of Montgomery, and a son, Eric, six years old.

—G. C. Scott

Carl Pfanstiehl

CARL PFANSTIEHL, Vice President and Director of Research of the Pfanstiehl Chemical Company of Waukegan, Illinois, was born in Columbia, Missouri, September 17, 1888. He was founder of the present Fansteel Metallurgical Corporation of North Chicago, Illinois. Granted well over a hundred patents, it is possible to touch only the highlights of his inventions: the first efficient ‘‘pancake’’ wound spark coil for gasoline engines; the process of making tungsten malleable, for the first time commercially available, and thus releasing the precious metal platinum during the World War; the first bar of tantalum made ductile by forging . . . the beginning of the tantalum industry; a means of welding tungsten to steel from which came the tungsten points used for contacts in magnetos; the single calibrated dial for radios; the development and manufacture of a line of rare chemicals, previously made only in Germany, vital in medical research and imperative in time of war; countless valuable developments in the pen field; and shortly before his death, a completely new type of precious metal alloy now being used for phonograph needles and precision instrument parts.

His inspired and untiring pioneer work in powder metallurgy and diffusion, particularly with the rare metals, in electricity and welding techniques, in rare chemicals and the phenomenon of fluorescence, have opened unlimited and as yet untouched fields for application and development.

Mr. Pfanstiehl was a member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New York Academy of Science, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, and the American Society for Metals. He was a recipient of the 1940 Modern Pioneer Award for invention and discovery.

—B. G. Francis

Charles W. Frederick

CHARLES W. FREDERICK, research scientist at the Hawk-Eye Works of the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, who pioneered in the design of lenses for aerial photography and the development of a new type of optical glass, died on November 29, 1942. Mr. Frederick had been associated with Eastman Kodak Company from 1914 to 1939 as head of the scientific and lens-designing staff of the Hawk-Eye Works. In 1939, Mr. Frederick withdrew from active industrial research, but continued as head of the research division of the Hawk-Eye scientific staff.

Mr. Frederick was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1870. After graduating from Kansas State University, he was for thirteen years a civilian scientist and teacher with the Navy before joining the Hawk-Eye Works. He served as a computer at the Naval Observatory in Washington and was assistant astronomer assigned to the Observatory’s equatorial telescope from 1902 to 1904.

During the two years following he took part in supervising the construction of an observatory at Tutuila, Samoa. In 1906 he returned to the mainland and spent several years in research at the Washington Naval Observatory, later going to the Naval Academy at Annapolis where he taught mathematics for five years.

Mr. Frederick designed some of the first aerial lenses used for military photography in the first World War, and during the last three years has evolved several new types of lenses used in the present conflict. His study of the possibilities of non-silica glass led to the development