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Missing Links in OSA’s Archives
John N. Howard
As OSA approaches it centennial in 2016, its staff and volunteers are working to
compile a comprehensive history of the organization. While we are gathering much
information, there are still a few elusive missing photos and biographies.
In just another five years, the Optical Society will celebrate its centennial:
One hundred years
since that day in De-
cember 1916 when 30
optics workers met in a
classroom at Columbia
University and voted
to form an Optical So-
ciety. Hilda Kingslake,
in her detailed history
of the first 50 years
of OSA, lists each
of those original members, along with
their birth dates and death dates (where
applicable); that history was published in
the March 1966 issue of the Journal of the
Optical Society of America (JOSA).
In 1976, Jarus Quinn, then the executive director of OSA, interviewed the last
surviving charter member, Charles H.
Kerr, during a visit to San Diego. That
interview appears in Optics News, 2( 13),
p. 83. Kerr died in July of 1978 at the
age of 93.
OSA is now thriving, with close to
17,000 members and local sections and
student chapters in many countries and
universities. Through this column, The
History of OSA, I have endeavored to
present some details on the early growth
of OSA and the lives of the officers. This
column first appeared in OPN in 2002,
and since then it has been published
John Howard
about 8-10 times per year. (This column
is number 80.)
It has not always been easy for OSA
archivists to find biographical information. The reference work American Men
and Women of Science did not even exist
until after World War II, and not every
OSA officer chose to be listed in those
volumes. In the days before Google, if
one was interested in learning more about
OSA leaders, he or she was reduced to
searching for information from obituaries
or other published work. Finding photos
was particularly difficult.
In the 1930s, OSA, the American
Physical Society and three other societies had formed a separate organization—the American Institute of Physics
(AIP), which helped to serve the publication needs of the five individual societies. AIP acquired a handsome brownstone in central New York City, just a
block from the present United Nations
building. To add interest to several halls
in that AIP building, the Institute staff
put up a series of photographs of all the
winners of the Nobel Prizes in physics,
and they decorated the walls of other
halls with photos of the presidents of
each of the AIP member societies.
When OSA at last managed to pur-
chase a building of its own in 1960, near
Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.,
they also assembled a series of photos of
the OSA presidents, from P.G. Nutting
to the present leader. The task became a
bit more difficult when OSA also tried to
display photos of earlier OSA secretaries,
treasurers, editors and medalists.
18 | OPN Optics & Photonics News
www.osa-opn.org
