Leo Maurice Hurvich (September 11, 1910 – April 25, 2009) was an American psychologist who conducted research into human
color vision
Color vision, a feature of visual perception, is an ability to perceive differences between light composed of different wavelengths (i.e., different spectral power distributions) independently of light intensity. Color perception is a part of ...
. He was married to fellow cognitive psychologist
Dorothea Jameson
Dorothea Jameson (November 16, 1920 – April 12, 1998) was an American cognitive psychologist who greatly contributed to the field of color and vision.
Biography
Jameson was born in Newton, Massachusetts. She went to Wellesley College. She elect ...
. The pair collaborated on much of their work, including an elaboration on the
opponent process
The opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from photoreceptor cells in an antagonistic manner. The opponent-process theory suggests that there are thr ...
theory. Hurvich was a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
and he received the
from the
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
.
Biography
Hurvich attended
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, earning undergraduate and doctoral degrees. He spent several years working at Harvard before he became a researcher at
Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
.
[ While working for Kodak, Hurvich was called before the ]House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloy ...
. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
mathematics faculty member W. T. Martin
William Ted Martin (June 4, 1911 – May 30, 2004) was an American mathematician, who worked on mathematical analysis, several complex variables, and probability theory. He is known for the Cameron–Martin theorem and for his 1948 book ''Several ...
testified that he was a former communist and he said that he thought Hurvich had been part of a circle of communists at Harvard. Hurvich asserted his right not to testify before the committee.
From 1957 to 1962, he was on the faculty of New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
.[ Hurvich was a ]Guggenheim Fellow
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
in 1964. He finished his career at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
, from which he retired in 1979. He was married to Dorothea Jameson
Dorothea Jameson (November 16, 1920 – April 12, 1998) was an American cognitive psychologist who greatly contributed to the field of color and vision.
Biography
Jameson was born in Newton, Massachusetts. She went to Wellesley College. She elect ...
, a psychologist with whom he collaborated on his vision research. The pair conducted important research that quantified the opponent process
The opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from photoreceptor cells in an antagonistic manner. The opponent-process theory suggests that there are thr ...
theory of color vision. Hurvich and Jameson's adaptation of the opponent process theory became known as a more complete explanation of color vision than the Young-Helmholtz theory.
Hurvich was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1975. Jameson and Hurvich shared the 1971 Howard Crosby Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists
The Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP), originally called the Society of Experimentalists, is an academic society for experimental psychologists. It was founded by Edward Bradford Titchener in 1904 to be an ongoing workshop in which memb ...
and they were among four recipients of the 1972 APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions to Psychology from the American Psychological Association. Hurvich received the 1982 Edgar D. Tillyer Award from the Optical Society of America
Optica (formerly known as The Optical Society (OSA) and before that as the Optical Society of America) is a professional society of individuals and companies with an interest in optics and photonics. It publishes journals and organizes conference ...
.
Jameson died in April 1998. Hurvich died at his New York City home in 2009.[
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hurvich, Leo
1910 births
2009 deaths
20th-century American psychologists
Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
Harvard University alumni
New York University faculty
University of Pennsylvania faculty
Kodak people