In 1973 Betty Judd proposed to establish an AIC award in memory of her husband, Deane Brewster Judd, to recognize outstanding work in the field of color science, the AIC has been carrying out the process of selection of the recipients for this award every two years. The selection is an arduous procedure that includes nominations by AIC members and analysis of antecedents of the nominees by a Committee composed of previous recipients of the award. The researchers who have received this award are presented below. The list of their most important publications is a solid collection of colour research that should be remembered and used.
Rolf Georg Kuehni (USA)
2023 at the AIC Congress, Chiang Rai, Thailand. Professor Rolf Georg Kuehni spent most of his life dedicated to color science. His major research contributions include color differences, indices of metamerism, theoretical bases of metamerism, color order systems, uniform color spaces, and modeling hue perception. He moved to the United States in 1963 where he became involved in the subject of color matching of textiles and technology. In 1965 he joined Verona Dyestuffs, where part of his responsibility was to try to make use of a Color Eye®. Sometime later he talked the management into acquiring an IBM 1130 computer and thereby began his involvement in computer colorant formulation. Throughout his career, Professor Kuehni has been a proponent of closer ties between industrial scientists studying and applying color technology and academic scientists studying color vision and developing the foundational principles of color science. After retiring in 2001, he maintained a solid interest in color science, active in the ISCC and in research committees of the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC). Driven by his strong belief in color education, Professor Kuehni served as an Adjunct Professor of color science at North Carolina State University from 2002 to 2018. He was the editor of the journal 'Color Research and Application' (CR&A) from 1987- 1989. He has written or co-authored nine books on diverse subjects such as computer colorant formulation, introductory color science and technology, perceptual color spaces, and color order systems and authored approximately 80 peer-reviewed scientific and technical articles as well as encyclopedia articles about color. Professor Kuehni has actively participated in the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) as a member or advisor on technical committees, such as TC 1-55 Uniform Colour Space for Industrial Colour Difference Evaluation, TC 1-56 Improved Colour Matching Functions, and TC 1-76 Unique Hue Data. He is also the recipient of the Armin J. Bruning award (1986), ISCC Godlove Award (2003), AATCC Olney Medal (2005), ISCC Nickerson Service (2015), ISCC Munsell Centennial Award for Science (2018).
2021 at the AIC Congress, Milan, Italy. John McCann has always been interested in color: high school chromatography; and blue/pinkCuCl isomer synthesis while freshman at Harvard. In summers, he worked for Edwin Land on two-color photography and Retinex Theory. After graduation (Biology, 1964), he worked for Land for 20 years; managing, Polaroid’s Vision Research Lab (1961-1996). Land and McCann invented algorithms to calculate appearance images from HDR luminance (1971). John set up Polaroid's first digital imaging laboratory (1975). He captured natural scenes, calculated appearances, and wrote sensations on media, mimicking what artists do in painting scenes. He continues research on human and electronic imaging. John is a Fellow of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IS&T) and the Optical Society of America (OSA); Past President of the IS&T and Artists Foundation, Boston; Past Secretary of the Inter-Society Color Council; IS&T/OSA Land Medalist, and an IS&T Honorary Member.For his scientific achievements in colour vision, colour discrimination, colour deficiency, luminous efficiency, the HK effect investigation, colour appearance modelling, colour constancy, colour name rendering and skin colour. He is Professor Emeritus at Chiba University. He was the Steering Committee Chair of the midterm meeting of AIC2015 Tokyo. Also, he served as an Executive Committee Member of AIC from 2002 to 2005. |
John McCann (USA) Hirohisa Yaguchi (Japan)2019 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Buenos Aires, Argentina. For his scientific achievements in colour vision, colour discrimination, colour deficiency, luminous efficiency, the HK effect investigation, colour appearance modelling, colour constancy, colour name rendering and skin colour. He is Professor Emeritus at Chiba University. He was the Steering Committee Chair of the midterm meeting of AIC2015 Tokyo. Also, he served as an Executive Committee Member of AIC from 2002 to 2005. The 2019 Judd Award was sponsored by the Argentine Color Group. |
2017 at the AIC 13th Congress, Jeju, Korea. His contributions to colour science include significant advances in colour difference evaluation, colour appearance modeling, colour emotion and harmony understanding and prediction, and lighting quality estimation. His mission has always been one of international dissemination of colour expertise. He is a full Professor at the College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, China, a part-time Professor at the Taiwan University of Science and Technology, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds, UK.
2015 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Tokyo, Japan, Emeritus professor, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris. Expert in color vision and appearance measurement, research on colorimetry, photometry, gloss metrics and LED illumination. French representative and former officer of CIE Division 1 (Vision), chair of CIE TC 1-36 “Chromaticity diagram with physiologically significant axes”, vice-president of CIE-France. Newton medal (Colour Group of Great Britain) and Verriest medal (International Colour Vision Society).
2013 at the AIC 12th Congress, Newcastle, UK. Professor in Color Science, Appearance, and Technology, Director of the Munsell Color Science Lab at Rochester Institute of Technology. Awarded by the ISCC, the Society of Imaging Science and Technology and the Colour Group of Great Britain. Author of the 3rd ed. of Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of color technology, and over 200 publications. Main research focus: color and imaging sciences for the visual arts.
2011 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Zurich, Switzerland. For her contributions to color vision research, physiological optics and color imaging science —particularly from a psychophysical approach—, which are reflected in a huge number of publications, as well as for her continuous involvement in the AIC activities, study groups, congresses and meetings, where her proposals concerning color language and philosophy, AIC history and other matters have a lasting impact. The 2011 Judd Award was sponsored by pro/colore, the Swiss Color Association.
2009 at the AIC 11th Congress, Sydney, Australia. For his outstanding contributions to the understanding of the processes involved in light and color vision. His publications in the field of vision science, his activities as organizer of meetings in related fields of research, as well as his individual and joint research projects in psychophysics and electrophysiology of vision constitute truly seminal works. The 2009 Judd Award was sponsored by the Colour Society of Australia.
2007 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Hangzhou, China. For his seminal work in accurate color measurement and color difference evaluation, his contributions to a wide variety of other fields of color science and metrology, such as studies on color order systems that attempted to resolve differences in philosophy between the Munsell and NCS systems, and his commitment to disseminate his knowledge to others. The 2007 Judd Award was partially sponsored by the Colour Society of Australia
2005 at the AIC 10th Congress, Granada, Spain. He represents one of the most precious aspects of the AIC: its role as a meeting place for people from different disciplines. Being a physicist, his work in the food industry has taken him outside the realm of physics and led him to look at the way color works in the wider world, in nature and culture. His book Food colour and appearance is a milestone in the field. The 2005 Judd Award was sponsored by the German Society of Color Studies
2003 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Bangkok, Thailand. In recognition of his dedicated educational and research contributions to the field of vision and color psychophysics (all his former students are active in related fields in Japan, and many of them are also active internationally), and for his contribution to the AIC activities, especially to an expansion of the AIC in Asian countries. He was the 9th AIC president.
2001 at the AIC 9th Congress, Rochester, USA. For his contributions to color and appearance measurement in a great variety of industrial applications, and his efforts to spread the knowledge of the problems related to color in Latin America. He has mainly worked on large-field color matching, photometry, retroreflective materials, color difference formulae, goniophotometric measurement, and color in food.
1999 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Warsaw, Poland. For a lifetime of significant contributions to the field of color. Foremost, for his dedication to color education. He established and directed The Rensselaer Color Measurement Laboratory, published over 275 articles and thirteen books on color and polymers, drafted a dozen important ASTM standards, and founded the journal Color Research and Application.  Anders Hård [1922-2009] (Sweden), Gunnar Tonnquist [1925-2024] (Sweden), Lars Sivik [1933-] (Sweden)1997 at the AIC 8th Congress, Kyoto, Japan. Their decades lasting joint effort culminated in the NCS, the Natural Color System and its atlas. The research was characterized by the phenomenological analysis of the experience of color in the spirit of Hering.
1995 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Berlin, Germany. For his contributions to a variety of colorimetric aspects brought up while formulating technical standards or reports in Germany as well as in international organizations such as CIE and the ISO. Terstiege was the 6th president of the AIC, and the organizer of the AIC quadrennial congress 1981, the Interim Meeting 1990, and the Midterm Meeting 1995 in Berlin.
1993 at the AIC 7th Congress, Budapest, Hungary. In recognition of his work on colorimetry and color vision, including many contributions to models of chromatic adaptation and color appearance. He has studied the assessment of sources simulating the CIE daylight illuminants, worked on the assessment of observer metamerism, and on the prediction of color appearance.
1991 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Sydney, Australia. For many contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms of color vision. Vos and Walraven combined approach gave the mathematical basis to the two-stage color vision model, which brings together the trichromatic theory and the opponent colors theory.
1989 at the AIC 6th Congress, Buenos Aires, Argentina. In recognition of his extensive contributions to the science and technology of color, and in particular for his work on the method of multidimensional scaling and his work in which the global structure of the Munsell color space is examined by the method and its variations. Indow was also the third president of the AIC.
1987 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Florence, Italy. Among his contributions are: the work on color negative films, the telecine transfer of film to television, the reproduction of reversal film using graphic art materials, the assessment of color appearance and the ability of an observer to scale the hue, colorfulness and lightness of a surface color using a variety of adaptation conditions. He was the 5th AIC president.
1985 at the AIC 5th Congress, Monte Carlo, Monaco. For their fundamental contributions to the science of color vision. In particular, their collaborative research provided quantitative bases for an opponent-process mechanism of color vision and for the elaboration of that concept through extensive experimentation and teaching.
1983 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Kungälv, Sweden. Known as the author of the MacAdam ellipses, his research has also included work on optimal colors, loci of dominant wavelength and purity, uniform chromaticity diagrams, chromatic adaptation, use of computers for colorimetric computation, loci of constant brightness and hue, and the basis for colorimetrically exact color reproduction.
1981 at the AIC 4th Congress, Berlin, Germany. In recognition of his extensive contributions to the science and technology of color. In particular, for his work in teaching, standardization, and the development of colorimetric science and its application. His most well known effort in standardization was the monumental task of developing the DIN color order system.
1979 at the AIC Midterm Meeting, Tokyo, Japan. His prolific career covered many areas of color science. He is well known for his co-authorship of two outstanding books: Color in business, science and industry (with D. B. Judd), and Color science: concepts and methods, quantitative data and formulas (with W. S. Stiles). Wyszecki was president of the CIE, and led the Colorimetry Committee for many years.
1977 at the AIC 3rd Congress, Troy, New York, USA. For his distinguished career, which featured studies of color vision and color-vision deficiencies, and produced much of the fundamental data incorporated in the standard observer of the CIE system for colorimetry used since 1931. Wright was professor of physics at the Imperial College, London, and served as the first president of the AIC.
1975 at the AIC 3rd Congress 1977, Troy, NY, USA. In recognition of her studies centered on the color grading of agricultural products, uniform color spaces, color differences, and the color rendering of light sources. Nickerson had a distinguished career in the United States Department of Agriculture, following an early association with the Munsell Color Company. |
Ming Ronnier Luo (Great Britain)
Françoise Viénot (France)
Roy S. Berns (USA)
Lucia R. Ronchi [1927-2020] (Italy)
Arne Valberg (Norway)
Alan R. Robertson (Canada)
John B. Hutchings (Great Britain)
Mitsuo Ikeda (Japan)
Roberto Daniel Lozano [1934-2018] (Argentina)
Fred Wallace Billmeyer Jr. [1924-2004] (USA)
Heinz Terstiege [1934-2001] (Germany)
Yoshinobu Nayatani [1927-2009] (Japan)%20Vos.gif)
Johannes J. (Hans) Vos (The Netherlands), Pieter L. Walraven [1931-2013] (The Netherlands)
Tarow Indow [1923-2007] (Japan, USA)
Robert William Gainer Hunt [1923-2018] (Great Britain)
Leo Maurice Hurvich [1910-2009] (USA), Dorothea Jameson [1920-1998] (USA)
David Lewis MacAdam [1910-1998] (USA)
Manfred Richter [1905-1990] (Germany)
Gunter Wyszecki [1925-1985] (Germany, USA, Canada)
William David Wright [1906-1997] (Great Britain)
Dorothy Nickerson [1900-1985] (USA)