Eugene C. Crittenden

1932 OSA President Eugene Crittenden joined National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in 1909 and he remained there as a physical standards expert until his retirement 41 years later. He became associate director and chief of the divisions in which the Bureau’s optical work was conducted. He specialized in photometry and illumination. As early as 1914, he was working on national standards for candlepower. He published chiefly in the Journal of the American Illuminating Engineering Society, although he had six papers published in JOSA.

In the mid-1950s, he became vice president of the International Commission of Weights and Measures. In 1951, he wrote an interesting JOSA article on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of NBS. In it, he highlighted the optical contributions of the earliest NBS researchers in optics and their involvement with OSA. He included group photos of early OSA meetings held at NBS in 1922 and the Michelson meetings in 1928 and 1934.

Eugene C. Crittenden died in March 1956.