Harold Hopkins

Harold Horace Hopkins ( born December 6, 1918 in Leicester, East Midlands, † October 22, 1994 in Reading, Berkshire ) was a British physicist.

Hopkins came from a poor family and studied physics and mathematics at University College, Leicester. He completed his studies in 1939. Afterwards he worked and earned his doctorate in 1945 at the optical company Taylor, Taylor and Hobson. Starting from 1947 he conducted research at Imperial College where he lectured on optics. In 1967 he became Professor of Applied Optics at the University of Reading. 1977 to 1980 he headed the Department of Physics. In 1984, he went into retirement.

Hopkins designed for the BBC, the first practicable zoom lens, which enabled the television much better outdoor shots.

In the 1950s he developed called an early endoscope with fiber optic cables, fibroscope. Attempts to image transfer with glass fibers there was before, for example in the 1930s by the German medical student Heinrich Lamm, but it was (instead of only 400 or lamb) perfected by Hopkins with thousands of fibers and coherent whole. Similar developments took place at that time by other designers such as the Dutchman Abraham van Heel. In the 1960s he developed in collaboration with the company of the German Karl Storzdas rigid endoscope with rod lens system, which he had in 1959 patented. For medical applications, he improved the system with surgeons at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. To 1967, the endoscopes were put on the market.

Hopkins was also involved in the 1970s in the development of laser disc at Phillips, whose optical design, it could be significantly improved by a mathematical analysis of the system.

In 1962, he led a techniques of Fourier optics and especially the modulation transfer function. For this he received the Thomas Young Prize of the Physical Society of London.

In 1984 he received the Rumford Medal of the Royal Society, whose fellow he was. In 1990 he was awarded the Lister Medal and Frederic Ives Medal in 1978 for the development of the endoscope.

Writings

• Wave theory of aberrations, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1950