[Deathwatch] Emmett Leith, holography pioneer, 78

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Emmett Leith, 78, a Pioneer in the Development of Holography, Dies

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: January 6, 2006

Emmett Leith, a scientist who took the concept of the hologram and
added the technology of the laser to help create three-dimensional
photography, died on Dec. 23 at a hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was
78.

The cause was an internal hemorrhage, said Kim Leith, his daughter.

Holograms are commonplace today, and can be found on credit cards and
children's stickers and have a broad range of industrial applications.
But at the time Dr. Leith presented his advances to the scientific
world, holography seemed to prove the newly minted epigram by Arthur C.
Clarke that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic."

The presentation, at a conference of the Optical Society in 1964,
caused a stir. Dr. Leith, a professor of engineering and computer
science at the University of Michigan, and a colleague, Juris
Upatnieks, described their work, and Dr. Leith later told the magazine
Michigan Engineer that people rushed from the presentation room to the
suite next door, where they lined up down the hallway to see the
startlingly realistic image of a toy train.

"Many of them thought it was done with mirrors," he recalled. "A few
wanted to know where the train was. I said, 'It's back in Ann Arbor.' "


The work built upon research by Dennis Gabor of the Imperial College
London, who coined the term "hologram." Dr. Gabor had been exploring
ways to improve the images from electron microscopes in the 1940's, but
ran up against the limitations of the technologies of the day.

The processes he envisioned required a highly coherent form of light,
with a single wavelength and color. But the mercury arc lamps that Dr.
Gabor used could not produce an image of much depth, and the images had
ghostly doubles.

Around the time of Dr. Gabor's research, Dr. Leith (pronounced leeth)
was working on a military radar program at Michigan's Institute of
Science and Technology, unaware of the microscopy work. But Dr. Leith's
efforts to make smaller, more efficient radar antennas and to present
the data from them led him down Dr. Gabor's path.

In a later memoir, Dr. Leith said that when he heard of Dr. Gabor's
work, his feelings were mixed. "There was some disappointment" that the
principles had already been invented, he wrote, but pride in the
recognition that the technology "was significant enough to have been
published in the scientific literature."

With the invention of the laser, which provided a source of highly
coherent light, Dr. Leith realized that holograms could be greatly
improved. Using a technique that he called "off-axis holography" and a
laser, he and Dr. Upatnieks eliminated the double-image problem that
dogged Dr. Gabor. Later researchers developed holograms that could be
viewed under incandescent light.

"It was really Emmett's invention that gave us true three-dimensional
photography," said Charles M. Vest, former president of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who worked with Dr. Leith at
Michigan.

In 1971, when Dr. Gabor won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his
research, the Nobel committee cited Dr. Leith's work. In 1979, Dr.
Leith was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Jimmy
Carter.

Dr. Leith was born in Detroit and received his degrees from Wayne State
University. In addition to his daughter Kim, he is survived by his
wife, June; another daughter, Pam Wilder of San Jose, Calif.; and three
grandchildren.


Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary