Emmett Leith

Emmett Leith Norman ( born March 12, 1927 in Detroit, † December 23 2005 in Ann Arbor ) was an American physicist and pioneer of holography.

Leith studied physics at Wayne State University ( Bachelor's degree in 1949, master's degree in 1952 ). From 1953 he conducted research at the Institute for Synthetic Aperture Radar Science and Technology of the University of Michigan, Willow Run. He was professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. He died shortly before his planned retirement from internal bleeding.

In 1978 he received a doctorate in electrical engineering from Wayne State University.

Leith introduced in the early 1960s with his colleague in Michigan Juris Upatnieks first holograms ago. In 1964 she presented the first three-dimensional hologram on the Spring Meeting of the Optical Society of America, the image of a toy train with birds. The ideas about it predates the invention of the laser in his work on military radars ( Synthetic Aperture Radar for aerial reconnaissance ). By Dennis Gábor ideas that developed this in connection with the improvement of electron microscopes in the 1940s, but at that time could not yet implement satisfactorily, Leith learned only later ( around 1962 ). Leith and Upatnieks used a laser and split the beam into an object beam and reference beam, each with different directions ( Off- Axis Holography ), an idea is based on the radar development and enabled them to avoid the problem of double vision from early attempts to holography.

In 1960 he received the Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award of the IEEE and the 1969 Ballantine Medal. In 1979 he received the National Medal of Science, 1985, the Frederic Ives Medal, the 1975 RW Wood Prize, and in 1983 the Dennis Gabor Award of the SPIE ( with Yuri Nikolayevich Denisjuk ).

He was married and had two daughters.

In his honor, the Medal Emmett Leith is the Optical Society of America named.