OPTICS: AN INTRODUCTION FOR OPHTHALMOLOGISTS.

By Kenneth N.Ogle, Ph.D. '30. Springfield, Illinois:Charles C Thomas, 1961. 265 pp. $8.75.

It occurred to me that it might be of interest to the Dartmouth family to learn something of the early history of graduate work in the Physics Department. Some fifty years ago, when all of the College was strictly undergraduate, it was necessary to grant the Master's degree in order to have Teaching Fellows, especially in the sciences. In the class of 1907, there was a student named Roland Ray Tileston, who went into physics and started his work by getting his A.M. in 1911, working primarily with Gordon Ferrie Hull Sr., then Appleton Professor of Physics. Tileston then went on to teach physics, but always felt the training that he received at Dartmouth under Professor Hull was superior to any physics training in the country at that time. Accordingly, when he took a permanent position as Professor of Physics at Colorado College, Tileston continued to send on his prospective graduate students to Dartmouth, and later when he transferred to Pomona College he continued to send his students from there to be trained in physics, particularly under Professor Hull.

The result was that from this time on a number of students trained by Tileston became Masters of Arts in physics at Dartmouth, and among them were numbered many prominent physicists including William Ralph Smythe, 1919, the late Brooks Bryce, 1927, Kenneth N. Ogle, 1927, and Stanley Livingston, 1928.

Later, when Adelbert Ames came to Dartmouth to work with Charles Proctor, it was quite evident that it was necessary to train people for the Eye Institute, giving them not only an A.M. but in some cases a Ph.D. in physiological optics. The result of all this was that as the research work in physics developed it showed definitely an interest in optics, and later of course developed into the Department of Research in Physiological Optics in the Dartmouth Medical School and finally into the Dartmouth Eye Institute, which we are all familiar with as being basically a Dartmouth enterprise.

It gives me special pleasure to review this new book by Kenneth Ogle on optics. The book is a result of his interest in training in optics and is described on the dust cover as "an introduction for ophthalmologists, research scientists, physiologists and psychologists concerned with visual problems, optometrists and physicists who need to know the basic elements of modern ophthalmic optics."

Kenneth Ogle is at present the head of the Section of Biophysics and Consultant in Visual Optics to the Section of Ophthalmology of the Mayo Clinic, Professor of Physiological Optics at the Mayo Foundation Graduate School, at the University of Minnesota, and is the author of an excellent book entitled Researches in Binocular Vision published by W. B. Saunders Company in 1950.

Professor Ogle's present book on optics is based upon a series of lectures and laboratory demonstrations prepared for fellows of the Mayo Foundation in the Section of Ophthalmology of the Mayo Clinic. It is an excellent example of clear presentation of ophthalmological optics, but in a review such as this only a few of the points which are especially treated will be mentioned.

The whole field of optics is treated from the point of view of vergence, with special emphasis on the way in which the vergence formulas tie in with the focal length formulas. There is an excellent chapter on the distortion of prisms which is not often found in most books on optics, and the treatment of the cardinal points, particularly the nodal points and principal points and the differences between them is very well done.

There is a rather thorough treatment of the differences between power and shape magnification which, again, is very useful in ophthalmological optics but not often found in textbooks. Kenneth Ogle was instrumental in developing the basic theory for the design of aniseikonic lenses and the correction of aniseikonia. The book is highly recommended for readers interested in optics, and each chapter is accompanied by appropriate problems. Your reviewer considers it one of the best books in ophthalmic optics that has been written up to the present time.