noo - 10 Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science Suider-Afrika Genootskap vir die Bevordering van die Wetenskap Rudolf" Marlo'th Brochure - Bro!ijure Annual award ceremony: November 2002 The South Africa Medal (gold): Awarded to Prof William F Harris A bursary from the Chamber of Mines allowed me to complete a BSc(Eng) in Chemical Engineering at the University of the Witwatersrand in I 962, after which I worked on gold extraction at the Government Metallurgical Laboratory. With a research assistantship at the University of Minnesota, despite being an extremely bad student, I managed to obtain a MSc in Chemical Engineering and Mathematics for a thesis entitled The mechanism of collapse of monomolecular films at fluid/fluid interfaces. Back in South Africa I spent a couple of years in the Department of Physics at Wits working on fundamental mechanisms of fracture. Here, with Professor F R N Nabarro as chairman, I became acquainted with the crystal dislocation, a concept which was to capture my imagination and define my research for the next 20 years. My PhD was obtained at the University of Minnesota with Professor L E Scriven as advisor and with a thesis entitled Defects in surface crystals. A highlight for me was my description of the dispiration, published in Philosophical Magazine. The defect was observed for the first time some 12 years later in crystalline polymers. My interests then were turning strongly towards the application of concepts from solid state Prof William F Harris physics, and the physical sciences in general, in the life The South Africa Medal (gold) is awarded annually sciences. I published on the geometry of virus to recognise exceptional contributions to the capsids, the mechanism of infection of bacteria by advancement of science on a broad front or bacterial viruses and the mechanism of movement in a specific field, by an eminent South African of bacteria and spermatozoa. I returned to the scientist. Prof. Harris received this prestigeous award Department of Chemical Engineering at Wits where I in recognition of his fundamental contributions was given the job of lecturing Chemical Engineering, to ophthalmic optics. He supplied the following Thermodynamics and Biochemical Engineering. I was autobiography: later appointed Professor of Micro-Biomechanics with RMI honorary appointments in the Department of Physics behalf of the OSRG I received a citation from the and the Department of Botany and Microbiology. American Academy of Optometry for distinguished contributions to visual optics. By 1984 my research ideas were drying up; I began searching for new inspiration. Professor Selwyn Super In 200 I I became the first person (I believe) in any had just started the Department of Optometry at field of vision to be rated as a researcher by the Rand Afrikaans University. That, together with my National Research Foundation; I received an A rating own high myopia, suggested that here might be an and joined a group of about 40 researchers in all opportunity to combine my interests in mathematics fields in the country. In the same year I was elected and the physical and biological sciences in vision. as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. In At the age of 44, and with a very tolerant and December 2002 I am to receive the Garland W Clay understanding wife, I packed in my professorship and Award from the American Academy of Optometry started from scratch as an optometry student at RAU. in San Diego for the paper in Optometry and Vision In January 1987 came a second turning point that was Science most widely cited worldwide in the last five to define my research until today. At the last minute years. the lecturer for Ophthalmic Optics became unavail­ Summary of the 2002 Rudolf Marloth Lecture by able. I took on the job, not half a step ahead of the Prof. Harris: Sight and Insight class. It seemed to me that the optics that underlay much optometric and ophthalmological practice was How many colours are there in the rainbow? We not really sound, that it was inhibiting development in answer "seven" because our teachers taught us VIB­ vision care and that here was something to get my GYOR, and we learned well. But do we observe? Do teeth into. By 1988 I had obtained the BOptom and we see for ourselves? And if we do, and we see seven was a professor again. In 1990, together with Dawid J or something else, does it matter? Malan and later Alan Rubin (now Professor), I formed How do spectacles and contact lenses really work? the Optometric Science Research Group (OSRG) with For that matter how do the eyes see? A year or two the express objective of building a sound scientific ago I said ·~t last I know how these things work". foundation for optics in optometry. I obtained an But then I've been saying exactly that, every year, HonsBSc in Statistics at UNISA in 1996. ever since I was given the job of lecturing Ophthalmic Since 1994 the OSRG has produced nine M Phils and Optics IS years ago. And, no doubt, I'll still be saying two DPhils in optometry. Three DPhils are in the that for as long as it is my privilege to lecture the pipeline. The OSRG has been a major factor in estab­ subject. lishing a research culture in optometry in South Africa But does it matter? Is it necessary for an academic to and is recognized as a world leader in the field of strive for insight? In a static world traditional thought quantitative analysis in vision. and understanding may be adequate. But what of a I have lectured at universities in Vienna, Paris, Madrid, world of change? The concepts of refractive error and Oxford, Hong Kong, Philadelphia, Maryland, Massa­ of sphere, cylinder and axis have served optometry chusetts, Minnesota, Delaware, Arizona, and at inter­ well for over a hundred years. But there are now national conferences in Santa Fe, Orlando, Boston, wholly new things, such as spectacle lenses of variable San Antonio, Washington, and France. I am on the power, refractive surgery, intra-ocular lenses with the editorial board of Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics ability to accommodate, and other even more exciting and serve as a reviewer for Optometry and Vision things waiting just over the horizon. Can our tradi­ Science, Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, tional approaches cope? The answer, in my opinion, and Journal of the Optical Society of America. My is a clear No. They are already proving unequal to list of publications includes some 200 papers in many the task. Change is not only across time but also peer-reviewed periodicals including Journal of Applied across space. South Africa, at the interface between Physics, Journal of Cell Biology, Scientific American, the developed and developing world, has unique chal­ Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, Nature, lenges and opportunities. If we are going to pass on Protoplasma, Journal of Mechanochemistry and Cell to our students merely what we learnt, then we are Motility, Materials Science and Engineering, Optical going to be found wanting. New technologies will Engineering, and in Optometry and Ophthalmology. simply pass us by. I was the recipient of the Optics Prize of the South Fundamentally my insight some two years ago was African Optical Society in 1991 and the J L Saks Award almost na"lvely simple: we see because light transfers of the South African Optometric Association three information about the outside world to the retina. times in the 1990s. As Editor of the South African At its simplest light takes the form of rays. Rays are Optometrist I received an award from the Association merely lines. A line carries information in precisely of Optometric Editors in Dallas in 1991. In 1997 on two ways: by virtue of its position and its direction, 2 RM and nothing else. Each ray delivers to the retina too few. Science, including mathematics, is important exactly these two pieces of information. From this for what it teaches, of course, but even more so for simple idea we can build a wholly new understanding what it inspires: healthy scepticism, rational explana­ of sight, spectacles, telescopes, intra-ocular lenses and tion, independent thought, careful observation and the optics of ocular surgery. It is an understanding self-confidence. with remarkable clarity, completeness and universality. It is for this reason that I see the current trend to Vision is a noisy signal and optical devices instruments decrease the scientific content of educational pro­ for enhancing the signal relative to the noise. At last I grams in optometry, and I think in other professions, know how these things work!, for now, anyway. as disturbing. It is the recipe for stagnation and missed What are our responsibilities as academics? They are opportunities. Too much of our education is VIBGYOR not merely to teach received wisdom, but to do much education. And it does matter. For we see seven more. They are for us to strive for insight into what instead of infinity. And we do not see the infra-red and we lecture and to inspire that insight in our students. ultra-violet at all. Science and insight are the antidote. We need to seek the universals, those things least With preparedness to see for ourselves, to think, to dependent on our particular context, the invariants embrace the new, to discard the worn-out, to thrill under changes in time and space. We do so knowing at the rainbow (the real one and not the miserable full well that this is an unending quest. And we must caricature) we do, indeed, have a chance for real do so without ignoring the particulars of our context.