| Edwin Herbert Land (1909-91) was a
physicist and an inventor. As a freshman at Harvard University (1926), he became
interested in polarized light. He left college and used a small laboratory at Columbia
University to develop a plastic sheet containing embedded crystals that would polarize
light (Polaroid). He returned to Harvard at 19 but left again in his senior year to set up
a laboratory in Boston. Later he founded the Polaroid Corporation, which he led for
decades. He held hundreds of patents including weapons improvements and the Polaroid camera and film that gave instant photographs, first in black and white (1949), and later in color (1963). Land published many scientific articles—one bibliography cited 85 articles published in a variety of scientific journals. Land received over 30 medals and awards as well as 15 or so honorary doctoral degrees including degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. Information above was gleaned from Current Biography Yearbook, 1981, Encyclopedia of World Biography, Second Edition, and "Land, Edwin Herbert," Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia. |