Brian O'Brien papers

Brian O'Brien (1898-1992) was the first director of the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, a position he held from 1938 to 1953 after serving eight years as chair of physiological optics. He married Ethel Cornelia Dickerman in 1922 and had one son, Brian O'Brien, Jr. After Ethel’s death, he married Mary Nelson Firth in 1956.

O'Brien's education began at the Chicago Latin school from 1909-1915 and continued at Yale Sheffield scientific school, where he earned a Ph.B in 1918 and a Ph.D. in 1922. He took courses at Harvard and MIT as well. During his time as a research engineer with Westinghouse Electric Company from 1922 to 1923, he and colleague Joseph Slepian created the auto-valve lighting arrestor, which is still used today. This was followed by a position at the J.N. Adam Memorial Hospital in Pittsburgh where O’Brien adapted carbon arcs with cored carbons to simulate the solar spectrum and provide tuberculosis patients with sun therapy year-round. From here O’Brien was led into early research on the ozone layer and erythema caused by the sun.

O'Brien's interest in the biological effects of solar radiation continued with his arrival at the University of Rochester in 1930. He developed techniques for converting the dehydrocholesterol found in milk to Vitamin D using ultra-violet light, enabling the production of Vitamin D-fortified milk to provide much-needed nutrients for healthy bone growth in children. Since photographic materials were of such importance to his work, O’Brien was intrigued by the properties of silver halide emulsions and invented a very high-speed slit camera that later proved useful in nuclear bomb tests.

By 1940 O'Brien was well aware that the United States' entry into the world war was imminent and began to prepare the Institute of Optics for military research. He helped form the Office of Scientific Research and Development, which reported directly to the White House, and headed Section D6 of the National Defense Research Committee. The collection is particularly rich in World War II material, including documents only recently declassified by the government. O'Brien and his team were especially noted for their development of mass-produced corrector plates for Kellner-Schmidt catadioptric systems, a major aspect of wartime technology. Other devices produced by O'Brien and the Institute of Optics include the “Seebackascope” to align a dive bomber between sun and target; the “Icarascope,” which reduced brightness so that an attacker coming out of sunlight would be visible; and anti-oscillation mounts for binoculars that allowed airline pilots to identify enemy planes at greater distances at night.

O'Brien left the University of Rochester for American Optical in 1953. He also returned to his earlier studies on the distribution of ozone in the stratosphere. This he did in collaboration with the high-ascent balloon missions of the National Geographic US Army Air Corps. O’Brien was also fascinated by unanswered questions about human vision, including the Stiles and Crawford Effect which observed that light entering the eye at the edges of the pupil seems to be less bright than light entering at the pupil’s center. O'Brien completed his study just in time to be of assistance to Holland’s A.C.S. van Heel in the production of light-transmitting glass fibers through use of a low-refractive-index cladding. This become the basis for the rapid advance of fiber optic technology from 1955 onward.

The post-war period also saw the election of O'Brien to the National Academy of Science and his participation in the Physical Sciences Division of the National Research Council. In 1966 O’Brien set up the Air Force Studies Board to advise the Systems Command on technical issues, and later formed a similar group, called the Space Projects Advisory Council, for NASA's early space programs. He continued as a consultant for NASA, the military, and various commercial interests after his retirement from American Optical in the 1970s. He continued in this capacity until shortly before his death in 1992 at age 94.

A brief biography by Brian O'Brien, Jr. and Walter Siegmund is available here.