Prof. Emmett Leith was born in Detroit, Michigan, on March 12, 1927, and received all three of his degrees, B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in physics, from Wayne State University, in 1949, 1952, and 1978, respectively. He spent his entire 50-year professional career at the University of Michigan. He was first employed as a research assistant (1952–1956) and then promoted to a research associate (1956–1960) at Willow Run Laboratories (WRL). In 1960, his research group at WRL was moved to the University of Michigan Institute of Science and Technology where he became a research engineer. He was appointed an associate professor of electrical engineering in 1965 and promoted to full professor in 1968.
In 1963, Emmett and Upatnieks introduced the technique of diffuse illumination to demonstrate the first high-quality holograms of three-dimensional objects. In Emmett’s own words: “We … found that the images formed from such holograms produced startling images, fully 3-D, without the need for viewing with special glasses, and had all of the usual properties of actual objects, including full parallax. One could move one’s head and peer ehind obscuring structures to see what was hidden behind, just as if one were viewing the actual objects.” When they presented their results publicly at the Annual Optical Society of America Meeting in the spring of 1964, they created quite a sensation.
Emmett Leith was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1982. In addition to this honor, he received many awards, including the National Medal of Science (1979), the IEEE Morris Liebmann Memorial Award (1968), the Stuart Ballantine Medal of the Franklin Institute (1969), the R.W. Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America (1975), the Frederic Ives Medal of the Optical Society of America (1985), and the Gold Medal of the SPIE (1990). Emmett supervised the research of 43 Ph.D. students at Michigan, and he regularly taught a variety of courses on basic optics and optical signal processing.
Emmett’s work on SAR and holography had an enormous technical impact and was a major driving force in shaping the field of optical signal processing. In addition to his educational and scientific contributions, his work spurred many commercial applications that now comprise a multi-billion dollar industry. Emmett, a humble individual by nature, loved his work and remained active in his field until the time of his death.
Award:
• IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award in 1960
• IEEE Morris Liebmann Memorial Award (1968)
• Ballantine Medal (1969)
• National Medal of Science in 1979
• Member National Academy of Engineering (1982)
• The Herbert Ives Medal of OSA in 1985
• The Gold Medal of SPIE
• The Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society of Britain
Member & Honors:
• Doctor of Science degree from University of Aberdeen
• Fellow of IEEE, SPIE and the Optical Society of America
• Honorary member of the Engineering Society (Detroit)
• Member: National Academy of Engineering.
By Professor Kim Winick
University of Michigan
EECS Dept., Univ. of Michigan
Tel: 734-764-520,Ffax: 734-763-8041
Email: winick@eecs.umich.edu
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