Perley Gilman Nutting (1873–1949) was an American

optical physicist Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultraviole ...

and the founder of the Optical Society of America (OSA). He served as its first president from 1916 to 1917. OSA is now known as Optica. Born August 22, 1873, in Randolph, Wisconsin, Nutting was a graduate of

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(BA, 1897), the University of California, Berkeley (MA, 1899), and Cornell University (PhD, 1903). He joined the National Bureau of Standards as a physicist in 1903. It is claimed that in 1904, Nutting constructed one of the earliest, if not the first, neon sign, which was displayed at the 1904

Louisiana Purchase Exposition The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, informally known as the St. Louis World's Fair, was an World's fair, international exposition held in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, from April 30 to December 1, 1904. Local, state, and federal funds tota ...

; however, this story has been disputed. In 1910, Nutting joined the staff of

Eastman Kodak Company 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 ...

prior to the arrival of Kodak's first research director Kenneth Mees, in 1912. He was the author of the 1912 book ''Outlines of Applied Optics'', which called for an increased level of academic study in the applied optics field. In 1915, Nutting convened a series of meetings among Rochester, New York–based physicists that resulted in the founding of the OSA in January 1916. Nutting moved from Kodak to Westinghouse Electric Company in 1917. In 1924 he returned to government work, moving to the United States Geological Survey where he remained until his retirement in 1943. He died August 8, 1949. Nutting's son, Perley G. Nutting Jr., was the tireless grad student known as observer PGN for the demonstration of the MacAdam ellipse.

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Past Presidents of the Optical Society of America
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nutting, Perley G. 1873 births 1949 deaths American physicists Stanford University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Cornell University alumni Presidents of Optica (society) Kodak people Optical physicists