Juris Upatnieks

Juris Upatnieks ( born May 7, 1936 in Riga) is a Latvian- American physicist and inventor who was a pioneer of holography.

Upatnieks fled with his parents before the Soviet occupation of Latvia to Germany. 1951 the family emigrated to the United States. He attended high school in Akron, Ohio and went on to study electrical engineering at the local university ( University of Akron, Bachelor, 1960). Subsequently, he conducted research at the Institute of Science and Technology of the University of Michigan, where in 1965 he took his master's degree in electrical engineering. 1973 to 1993 he worked at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, and was also an adjunct professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There he directed until 1996 a lab course in optics. 1993 to 2001 he was a consultant at Applied Optics in Ann Arbor. 1996 to 2001 he was also a researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics ) from the University of Michigan.

In 1964, he presented with Emmett Leith the first holograms in the U.S. and published about it with Leith in a number of works of 1962 to 1964.

Upatnieks holds 19 patents ( 2009). For example, he invented a system based on holographic principles target system for rifles.

In 1975 he received the RW Wood Prize of the Optical Society of America, and in 1976 the Holley Medal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In 1976, he was the inventor of the year, the American Association for the Advancement of Invention and Innovation. He is a member of the Optical Society of America and the International Society for Optical Engineering and a foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, the Great Medal he received in 1999.