OSA NEWS

In Memoriam: Russell De Valois

Russell De Valois, a professor of psychology and vision science at the University of California, Berkeley, died Saturday, September 20, from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. He was 76.

The 1988 Edgar D. Tillyer Award recipient, De Valois was renown for his efforts in spatial and color vision. OSA awarded him this distinction for his extensive contributions to our understanding of visual mechanisms, particularly the analysis and encoding of information in the visual nervous system. His experiments resolved a century-old debate about color vision and spurred new ideas and views of spatial vision.

At the Frontiers in Optics meeting next week, OSA will dedicate two symposia to De Valois and his important contributions to psychophysics and physiology of vision.

Born in Ames, Iowa, on December 15, 1926, De Valois spent his childhood in Kodaikanal, India, where his parents served as missionaries for the Dutch Reformed Church. He returned to the United States in 1943 to enter Oberlin College and pursue degrees in zoology and physiology. De Valois went on to receive his Master of Arts in psychology in 1948 and was awarded his Ph.D. in physiological psychology from the University of Michigan in 1952.

De Valois then became a professor at the University of Michigan, following that up with a post-doctoral appointment in Germany at Freiburg University from 1953-54 as a Fulbright Scholar in zoology and neurophysiology. After this, De Valois took a position at Indiana University in Bloomington, where he earned academic recognition for his work describing the brain mechanisms behind color vision.

In 1968, De Valois joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing efforts on color vision and perception of spatial information. Over his tenure at UC Berkeley, De Valois, often in conjunction with his wife, Karen, who was a colleague also specializing in psychology and vision science, concentrated on the early stages of spatial vision, specifically highlighting how perception varies depending upon the graininess or resolution of what is seen. He co-authored a book with his wife, “Spatial Vision,” in 1988, and it became one of the most influential works on the topic, summarizing two decades of research in the field. At the time of his death, De Valois and his wife were co-authoring another book, this one on color vision, and were developing a multistage model of color perception.

De Valois was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Tillyer Medal from OSA, the Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists and the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association. He was a Fulbright Fellow, a William James Fellow of the American Psychological Society and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

De Valois is survived by his wife of 34 years, Karen De Valois; two children with Karen, Chad of Oakland, CA, and Kamala De Valois of Berkeley, CA; three children by a previous marriage, Geoffrey of Los Angeles, Gregory of San Jose and Gordon of Oakland; a son-in-law, Michael Ellis of Berkeley; sisters Margaret Van Anrooy of Woodland Park, CO, and Francine Schramm of Brookfield, WI; a brother, John James De Valois Jr., of Redwood City, CA; two grandchildren; and numerous nieces and nephews.

Additional information is available on the University of California, Berkeley Web site.