Brian O'Brien
| Brian O'Brien | |
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Portrait of Brian O' Brien
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| Born |
January 2, 1898 Denver, Colorado |
| Died | July 1, 1992 (aged 94) , Connecticut |
| Residence | U.S. |
| Nationality |
Irish American |
| Institutions |
Westinghouse Electric Co J.N. Adam Memorial hospital University of Rochester Institute of optics Office of Scientific Research and Development National Geographic U.S. Army Air Corps |
| Alma mater | Yale Sheffield /w additional course work at MIT & Harvard |
| Known for | Night vision / Metascope, fiber optics, wide-film / screen projection |
| Notable awards | The Medal of Merit |
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Brian O'Brien, Ph.D. was an optical physicist and "the founder of the Air Force Studies Board and its chairman for 12 years. Dr. O'Brien received numerous awards, including the Medal for Merit, the nation's highest civilian award, for his work on optics in World War II and the Frederic Ives Medal in 1951. Circa 1966 he "chaired an ad hoc committee under the USAF Science Advisory Board (AFSAB) looking into the UFO problem". He also had steering power over National Academy of Sciences (NAS) projects, Project Blue Book, and helped pave the way for the Condon Committee.
"Brian O' Brien was born in Denver, Colorado in 1898 to Michael Phillip and Lina Prime O' Brien. His education started in the Chicago Latin School from 1909–1915, and continued at the Yale Sheffield scientific school where he earned a Ph.B. in 1918 and a Ph.D. in 1922. He also did course work at MIT and Harvard.
In 1922 he married Ethel Cornelia Dickerman and they had one son, Brian, Jr. After Ethel Cornelia died, he married a second time to Mary Nelson Firth in 1956.
He was a research engineer at Westinghouse Electric Co. from 1922 to 1923. During this period he developed, along with Joseph Slepian, the auto-valve lightning arrester, which is still in use.
In 1923 he moved to J. N. Adam Memorial hospital in Perrysburg, N.Y., a tuberculosis sanitarium run by Buffalo's Public Health Department. Prior to the use of antibiotics, the primary treatment for tuberculosis was fresh air and sunshine. There was some evidence that sun tanning did help in the remission of the disease, but Perrysburg—40 miles south of Buffalo—had very little sunshine in the winter. Therefore, O'Brien, as a physicist on staff, developed a carbon arcs with cored carbons that very closely matched the solar spectrum. With this development the patients could have sun therapy year-round. Due to a general interest in biological effects of solar radiation, he published some of the early work on the ozone layer and erythema caused by the sun.
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Wikipedia