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In Memoriam: Carl R. Ingling,
Sep 11, 2010
In Memoriam: Carl R. Ingling, 1936-2010
Carl R. Ingling, an OSA Fellow who was an internationally recognized color vision researcher, passed away on Saturday, 11 September 2010, after a prolonged illness. He was 74.
Ingling received his B.S. (Physics) from Duke University in 1958, worked at Eastman Kodak Co. for three years (1958-1961), and then entered graduate school at the University of Rochester, receiving his Ph.D. (Psychology) in 1966. From 1966-68, he was an NINDB postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester. In 1968, he joined the faculty of the Department of Biophysics (now the Division of Sensory Biophysics) at The Ohio State University, where he was a central member of the University’s Institute for Research in Vision and was widely recognized for his innovative research in human color vision. Ingling later moved from Biophysics to the Department of Zoology. He retired from the university in 2000.
Ingling believed that the best research is based on the principle of strong inference, in which each experiment is designed to test a specific hypothesis. He was passionate in his quest to advance the understanding of how the visual system works, and he had a remarkable talent for transmitting that passion to his students. His research efforts were aimed at revealing the relationships between the underlying receptive field structure of single retinal neurons and the mathematical structures of color vision. He developed a highly cited opponent vector model of color vision capable of describing many aspects of vision from threshold to suprathreshold appearance. He also made early and significant contributions to the understanding of how the responses of individual cone classes are related to both spatial vision and color vision. Ingling served as a mentor to many doctoral students who remain active members of the vision science community.
Ingling was elected an OSA Fellow in 1978 and became an honorary member of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) in 1993. He was also a member of Sigma Xi, AAAS and the Psychonomic Society.
He is survived by his wife, Mary Craig Powell, three children and four grandchildren.
A private memorial event was held on 18 September 2010. The family requests that donations go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, ATTN: Tribute Gifts, Church Street Station, P.O. Box 780, New York, NY 10008-0780, or online.
