Rudolf Kingslake

Rudolf Kingslake (born August 28, 1903 in London , † February 28, 2003 in Rochester , New York ) was a British optical engineer.

Life

Kingslake was born as Rudolf Klickmann. During the First World War , the family changed the German-speaking name to Kingslake. He studied technical optics at Imperial College with Alexander Eugen Conrady (master's degree in 1926). He then developed lenses at Sir Howard Grubb, Parsons and Company in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then worked for the International Standard Electric Company in London. In 1929 he went to the USA at the University of Rochester , where a faculty for technical optics (Optical Design) was founded on the initiative of Eastman Kodak and Bausch and Lomb and Kingslake was appointed to the professorship. In 1937 he became head of lens design at Eastman Kodak. In 1969 he retired from the university, but continued to teach until a few years before his death (most recently in the university's summer schools). He died at the age of 99 in February 2003, two weeks after his wife.

Kingslake had an international reputation as a lens designer and trained a large number of professionals in this field in the USA. He published several books on technical optics, including the new edition and postponed manuscripts of his teacher Conrady, which he edited with his daughter Hilda (1902-2003), with whom he was married. Hilda Kingslake was also a well-known optics expert (she was studying technical optics with Kingslake at Imperial College) who published a history of the Optical Society of America and the University of Rochester Optics Institute.

A prize for the best publication in SPIE's Optical Engineering magazine is named after Kingslake. A professorship at the University of Rochester is named after him and his wife.

In 1973 he received the Frederic Ives Medal , the Optical Society of America's highest honor. In 1980 he received the SPIE gold medal. In 1978 he was named Rochester Engineer of the Year .

He was the editor of Applied Optics and Optical Engineering (from 1965).

Fonts

• Applied Optics and Optical Engineering, 1958
• Lenses in Photography: The Practical Guide to Optics for Photographers, Garden City 1951, New York, Barnes 1963
• Optical Systems Design, Academic Press 1983
• Lens Design Fundamentals, Academic Press 1978, 2nd edition with R. Barry Johnson, Academic Press 2010
• A History of the Photographic Lens, Academic Press 1989
• Optics in Photography, SPIE Optical Engineering Press 1992
• Editor with Hilda Kingslake of Conrady: Applied Optics and Optical Design, Part 2, Dover 1960 (first volume published in 1929, new edition Dover 1957)

Web links

• University of Rochester at Kingslake