Harry Blum (January 30, 1924 – April 19, 1987) was a researcher at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, known for his work in 1967 introducing the

medial axis The medial axis of an object is the set of all points having more than one closest point on the object's boundary. Originally referred to as the topological skeleton, it was introduced in 1967 by Harry Blum as a tool for biological shape recogn ...

and

grassfire transform In image processing, the grassfire transform is the computation of the distance from a pixel to the border of a region. It can be described as "setting fire" to the borders of an image region to yield descriptors such as the region's skeleton or m ...

of a shape, and more generally for his work on shape analysis,

topological skeleton In shape analysis, skeleton (or topological skeleton) of a shape is a thin version of that shape that is equidistant to its boundaries. The skeleton usually emphasizes geometrical and topological properties of the shape, such as its connectivity, ...

ization, biological form, and

visual perception Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum reflecte ...

Life

Blum was originally from

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, where he was born on January 30, 1924. During World War II, he worked for the Navy in the

New York Naval Shipyard The Brooklyn Navy Yard (originally known as the New York Navy Yard) is a shipyard and industrial complex located in northwest Brooklyn in New York City, New York. The Navy Yard is located on the East River in Wallabout Bay, a semicircular ben ...

. After the war, he became an engineer for the

New York City Subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the government of New York City and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, an affiliate agency of the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Opened on October 2 ...

before going to

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, where he graduated in 1950. From 1950 to 1958 he worked for the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

at the

Rome Air Development Center Rome Laboratory (Rome Air Development Center until 1991) is the US "Air Force 'superlab' for command, control, and communications" research and development and is responsible for planning and executing the USAF science and technology program. ...

, also earning a master's degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

in 1958. From 1958 to 1960 he worked for

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

at the

SHAPE Technical Centre The SHAPE Technical Centre or Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe Technical Centre (STC) was formerly known as the SHAPE Air Defence Technical Centre (SADTC). It was formed in 1955 and located in The Hague, Netherlands. It conducted rese ...

in the Netherlands, and from 1960 to 1967 he worked for the

Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, known collectively as air, retained by Earth's gravity that surrounds the planet and forms its planetary atmosphere. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for ...

, where he began his work on biological and visual shape description. He joined the

, in the Lab of Statistical and Mathematical Methodology of the Division of Computer Research, in 1967, and retired in 1982. He died on April 19, 1987.

Selected publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blum, Harry 1924 births 1987 deaths Cornell University alumni Syracuse University alumni National Institutes of Health faculty