Leonard Thompson Troland (1889–1932) was an American
physicist,
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
and
psychical researcher
Parapsychology is the study of alleged psychic phenomena (extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis (also called telekinesis), and psychometry) and other paranormal claims, for example, those related to near ...
.
Career
Troland graduated in 1912 from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in biochemistry. He then studied psychology at
Harvard University, where he obtained a Ph.D. in 1915. He worked for a year as a Harvard Travelling fellow at the
General Electric Nela research lab. He served as a member of committees of the National Research Council on vision and aviation psychology. At Harvard, he gave advanced courses in psychology, and he followed up his 1926 book ''The Mystery of Mind'' with ''Fundamentals in Human Motivation'' in 1928. At the same time he was chief engineer of the
Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation of California and was appointed Director of research at Technicolor in 1925.
He was elected to serve as president of the
Optical Society of America from 1922 to 1923.
He gave his name to the
troland (symbol Td), the unit of ''conventional retinal illuminance''. It is meant as a method for correcting
photometric measurements of
luminance
Luminance is a photometric measure of the luminous intensity per unit area of light travelling in a given direction. It describes the amount of light that passes through, is emitted from, or is reflected from a particular area, and falls withi ...
values impinging on the
human eye
The human eye is a sensory organ, part of the sensory nervous system, that reacts to visible light and allows humans to use visual information for various purposes including seeing things, keeping balance, and maintaining circadian rhythm.
...
by scaling them by the effective
pupil size.
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 ...
gives an
award on his behalf.
In 1932, he fell to his death from
Mount Wilson.
Psychical research
Troland took interest in
psychical research and had carried out experiments in
telepathy
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...
at
Harvard University which were reported in 1917. He was one of the first scientists to use a machine in this type of experiment instead of a human experimenter. The machine consisted of a
lamp
Lamp, Lamps or LAMP may refer to:
Lighting
* Oil lamp, using an oil-based fuel source
* Kerosene lamp, using kerosene as a fuel
* Electric lamp, or light bulb, a replaceable component that produces light from electricity
* Light fixture, or ligh ...
which when triggered would light either of two square blocks. The agent would attempt to perceive the light in one room while the receiver would use a switch to identify which lamp had been lit in the other room. Troland discovered that the subjects had produced below chance expectations.
[Asprem, Egil. (2014). ''The Problem of Disenchantment: Scientific Naturalism and Esoteric Discourse, 1900-1939''. Brill Academic Publishers. pp. 362-364. ]
Publications
*''A Technique for the Experimental Study of Telepathy and Other Alleged Clairvoyant Processes'' (1917)
''The Nature of Matter and Electricity: An Outline of Modern Views'' ith Daniel Frost Comstock">Daniel_Frost_Comstock.html" ;"title="ith Daniel Frost Comstock">ith Daniel Frost Comstock(1917)
*''The Mystery of Mind'' (1926)
''The Fundamentals of Human Motivation''(1928)
See also
*
Optical Society of America
*Troland Research Awards
References
External links
Articles Published by early OSA Presidents– Journal of the Optical Society of America
{{DEFAULTSORT:Troland, Leonard T.
1889 births
1932 deaths
20th-century American physicists
20th-century American psychologists
Harvard University alumni
Parapsychologists
Presidents of the Optical Society
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Optical physicists