Matthew Luckiesh

Matthew Luckiesh DSc, DE, (September 14, 1883 Maquoketa, Iowa – November 2, 1967 Shaker Heights, Ohio) was a physicist and, as the Director of General Electric's Lighting Research Laboratory at its Nela Park National Lamps Works facility in East Cleveland, Ohio, he pursued research on light and vision. In his day, he was known as the "Father of the Science of Seeing."

Luckiesh developed several theories on color and its physiological effect on people. He was also interested in determining the conditions under which optimal visibility was achieved, and in examining the relationship between light and seeing, in order to design better types of lamps. During World War I he studied camouflage, and later invented artificial sunlight and germicidal lamps. Luckiesh produced eleven U.S. patents, 28 books and about 860 scientific and technical articles, published between 1911 and 1960.

Asked how to say his name, he told The Literary Digest "My name is pronounced as if it were spelled loo'kish. The u in the first syllable is the u in rude, and the second syllable rimes with dish."

After growing up in Cleveland and attending universities in Iowa, Luckiesh returned to Cleveland to start work for the General Electric, Lamp Division in 1910.

Luckiesh was married with two daughters and was a Roman Catholic.

Among the lamps attributed to Luckiesh was the MAZDA Flametint Lamp, which was designed to create mood and to resemble the color of licking flames, rather than to produce adequate light for serious seeing. In 1927 about 25-35% of all lamps sold were of that design, and in 1929 sales totaled about 13 million. Another of his lamps, referred to as the MAZDA Daylight Lamp, had coiled tungsten filaments and transparent blue glass. The lamp approximated average daylight colors and was used in department stores and settings where it was important to determine accurate discrimination of the colors of objects.

Luckiesh wrote numerous books and articles on light and other aspects of physics, including Color and Colors, in 1938.

In 1940, Luckiesh and Frank Moss compared 5th and 6th grade students in well-lit classrooms to students in regular (poorly lit) classrooms, and found significant increases in the scores on the New Stanford Achievement Test were demonstrated by the students in the well-lit classrooms.[1] However, it is entirely likely that the students in the poorly lit classrooms were of lower socioeconomic status and the schools were poorly funded. This may account for the discrepancy, rather than the difference in lighting conditions.

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