Well Wishes for Gerald

Congratulations. I have very happy memories of my mentor in Berkeley. Your encyclopedic knowledge of vision was, and is, inspiring. You employed your full range of skills from determining the prescription for my glasses, so that I could achieve decent hyperacuity thresholds, to advice on how to build academic careers, with many discussions on programming visual display systems in between. I arrived knowing about Fourier approaches to examining vision but with concerns about them, a position you reached years earlier, and you showed me the tools for addressing local stimulus features. The interaction between global and local has occupied much of my time since and I am grateful for the toolkit, and insights, that you provided. Your friendship has always been valued and your contribution to the field meticulous, always focused on critical issues, often provocative and extremely influential. A spectacular role model so far and we all look forward to what comes next.

– David Badcock, The University of Western Australia

Dear Gerald,

Congratulations on your remarkable achievement: completing your 100th circular journey around the sun. And while at it, you’ve gifted vision science with groundbreaking work on optics, spatio-temporal vision, stereopsis and eye movements, to mention just a few of your areas of expertise. The ‘Westheimer’ entries in my EndNote library attest to your influence on my education in vision science - thank you, Gerald. (As an aside, among my favorites is your trenchant historical analysis questioning the popular view that Helmholtz and Bayes were singing in the same key.)

So, Gerald, all best wishes as you continue to chalk up more mileage journeying around the sun.

Fondly,

– Randolph Blake, a.k.a. Randy, Vanderbilt University

Dear Gerald,

My husband Del Lindsey and I have such a fond memory of our chat in the car when you visited OSU. You will be happy to hear that our college has so far improved since then, with a multi-ethnic, multi-national faculty and student body.

I also remember when you visited Mat when I was his PhD student. I was a very young student then, and you were most kind to me.

My own father just turned 100, so I know how very momentous an occasion this is. Congratulations! And many happy years to come!

Affectionately,

Angela Brown, The Ohio State University College of Optometry

Gerry,

Sorry I cannot make it in person- you have been an inspiration since my time in grad school at OSU. Your presence and wisdom has helped build Berkeley as the leader in Vision Science.

– Steve Burns, Indiana University

Happy Birthday, Gerald!

Enjoy the accolades and congratulations and have a great day. All of us are privileged to know you and work with you. I look back fondly on the time I spent in your lab and wish you well!

– Tom Butler

Happy Birthday, Gerald!

Congratulations on reaching this milestone!

And, many many thanks for all your contributions to vision science and optometry!

– Susana Chung, UC Berkeley

Dear Gerald,

Best wishes for your milestone birthday. Thanks for your wonderful contribution to vision research throughout your career. The quality and insight of your work has been inspiring.

All the best,

– Michael Collins, QUT Australia

Dear Gerald. Many congratulations indeed on this wonderful milestone. I am really sorry that I can't be there to help you celebrate (or to help eat the cake that I can't imagine anyone other than you baking!) - but we will all be present in spirit! I will look forward to the photographs.

Best wishes,
– Peter Dayan, MPI for Biological Cybernetics

Gerald,

Thanks so much for always supporting me, from a graduate student to a faculty member! Your insight and advice was invaluable, as is your contribution to vision science. I will be forever grateful for both.

Thanks again,
– Daniel Dilks, Emory University

Congratulations Gerald. I keep rereading your papers and rediscovering how insightful they are. And I keep citing them. Their impact doesn’t seem to fade. And the papers keep on coming! Another big contribution you made to my outlook on vision came from a talk—more of a good-natured argument—we had in your office years ago. It went on all afternoon. It was entertaining, it was informative, and it was memorable. We argued about sinusoidal gratings: Do they have a role in studying stereo vision or do they invariably mislead? I think the real point was to continue the jousting, which was great fun and kept me rethinking my position long afterward.

As for turning 100, my mother once said that she was so relieved to have turned 101—people make such a big deal about being a hundred that they can make you a little crazy. Gives you something special to celebrate next year!

– Bart Farell, Syracuse University

Dear Gerald,

Congratulations on this wonderful occasion! And on your extraordinary record of research, with your landmark contributions to optometry, optics, and visual psychophysics, to visual neurophysiology, to the history of these fields, and beyond, together with your service to the community, mentoring, and the promotion of scholarship. We truly stand in your shadow.

I wish I could have joined you in person for this celebration, but I am with you in spirit.

Very best wishes,
– David Foster, University of Manchester

The legacy of Professor Gerald Westheimer by Duco Hamasaki

Dear Gerald, Congratulations on your 100th and for all you have accomplished. I’m sure that all of your academic accomplishments and honors have been stated by others, and I don’t need to repeat them. But I do want to write about the people legacy you have accomplished.

You remember we first met in 1959—65 years ago. You had just joined the faculty of the UC School of Optometry, and this was the year I received my PhD. You brought Dr. Giles Brindley, a young, visual physiologist from Cambridge University with you. All of the graduate students attended and learned from Dr. Brindley’s lectures and were all impressed by his knowledge.

One day, Dr. Brindley walked into my laboratory and asked me if I would be interested in collaborating with him on a research study. I asked him to tell me more and what my role would be. After learning what he had in mind, I agreed to collaborate. The research went well, but we realized that we would not be able to complete it before he had to return to Cambridge. After discussing several ways to complete the research, Dr. Brindley said, 'Why don’t you come to Cambridge, and we can complete the research there'. I was shocked, but quickly agreed.

I applied for a NIH fellowship, and asked you and Dr. Brindley, and Professors E. Marg, and Gordon Walls for letters of recommendation. I was successful and began my fellowship in September of 1961. In December, I received a letter from Dr. EWD Norton of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami School of Medicine inviting me to join his faculty at BPEI. I did not know Dr. Norton or BPEI and neither had the members of the Physiological laboratory. But there was one of your colleagues who had also studied under Professor Glenn Fry at Ohio State University. He was Dr. Mat Alpern who was then in the Department of Ophthalmology of Univ. Michigan. Mat had also not heard of Dr. Norton or BPEI, but then Mat gave me the best advice to make a decision; if you want to do research with minimal teaching, go to BPEI where your chances of receiving funding for your research will be better.

I accepted the offer and joined the faculty at BPEI. When I first met Dr. Norton, I asked him where we had met and how did he know enough about me to offer this faculty position. He said he was chairman of the NIH committee that reviewed the applications for fellowships. He said that the recommendation letters convinced him that I would be a good addition to his faculty. So, you and Gile’s recommendations were what convinced Dr. Norton to offer me the faculty position. I remained there all 35 years of my academic career.

So Gerald, you were responsible for my first fellowship, my first academic job, and, in fact, my entire academic career. I thank you.
But, it does not stop there. I met my wife Sandra Rogers, at BPEI, and we were married in 1967. We had two sons. The older one was David who is now a Vice President at Charles Schwab Corporation in Colorado. His daughter won first place in snowboard competition in Colorado and was third nationally. Max, his younger son, plays hockey, and his team won the championship for Colorado in his age group.

Our younger son, John, is a criminal defense attorney in San Francisco. He was appointed to the Police Commission, and ran for District Attorney in the 2022 election. Unfortunately, he lost even though he had the endorsement from the Democratic party. He is still attorneying, and if you have any friends who are crooks, they can call John.

So Gerald, in your legacy you have a successful visual scientist, a kind and impactful kindergarten teacher (Sandra), a VP at a major financial company, snowboard and hockey champions, and a criminal defense attorney.

All of this just because you came to the UC School of Optometry 65 years ago. My family and I thank you and wish you the very best.

– Duco I. Hamasaki

Dear Gerald,

I wish you all the best from Switzerland.

All the best,
– Michael Herzog, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne

Happy birthday Gerald! I wish I could be there but hope to see you soon. Its been way to long. You were always such a great mentor to me and I learned so much from working with you.

– Mitesh Kapadia, Tufts Medical Center

Dear Gerald,

I regret I could not attend the celebration. It will be a momentous event! I am delighted that your contributions to our field continue and wish you the very best!

– Eileen Kowler, Rutgers

Dr. Westheimer has profoundly influenced my professional development, serving as a true mentor and igniting a strong curiosity within me for research. He instilled the valuable lesson that retirement is not a necessity but rather a choice driven by a waning passion for one's field. Inspired by this philosophy, I am committed to nurturing my own curiosity and passion for medicine, aiming to maintain a fulfilling career well into my later years.

– Jonathan Lavian, MD, FAAD, Honor Health, AZ

Dear Gerald,

Congratulations on 100 years of vitality on Planet Earth, and on a lifetime of contributions to vision science and improvement of the human condition. Since 1976 when you were editor for my first journal publication, you have been an inspiration and scientific guiding light for me. You have been a role model throughout my career.

I am sorry I will miss the celebration on April 14. It will be a wonderful event. But I hope to see you during my brief visit to Berkeley in late May.

All best wishes!

– Gordon Legge, University of Minnesota

Happy 100th birthday, Gerald! Reaching this incredible milestone is a true testament to your vibrant spirit.

For the past 30 years, you've been a guiding light in my life, both as a mentor and a friend. My postdoc experience with you, especially working with those clunky yet precision CRTs for hyperacuity experiments, was unforgettable and a turning point in my career. Without your guidance ever since, I wouldn't be where I am today. Your profound insights and invaluable support have extended to my family as well, and we are all forever grateful.

Wishing you a joyous 100th birthday filled with cherished memories and a continued zest for life that remains an inspiration.

Love,
– Wu Li, Beijing Normal University (and family)

Dear Dr. Westheimer,

What an honor it is to celebrate a century of life with you. To a centenarian whose heart remains as young as ever, may your 100th birthday be as extraordinary as you are. As you reach 100, may your days be filled with sunshine, your heart with joy, and your world with love.

I am honored for having worked with you, appreciate the friendship that you offered me and my family in the last 30 years. Wishing you a remarkable 100th birthday. I look forward to visiting you year after year in the future.

– Junzhong Liang, Innovations for Vision and Ophthalmology

Gerald, I hope you are doing well. I am now 80 but I still remember fondly my association with you. Stay healthy.

– Richard Marrocco, University of Oregon

Gerald: very best wishes for your centenary birthday. As with your science, you set the bar where few can reach. Thank you for all the advice and guidance you have given me over the years and for tolerating my many questions. I have really enjoyed our correspondence and continue to value your opinion.

Sorry I can't make it over to Berkeley for the celebration. I hope the event goes well and you enjoy the company of your many friends. Hopefully I'll make it back out at some point to catch up in person.

Many happy returns from Paul, Jen, Oscar and Felix

– Paul McGraw

Gerald, congratulations on reaching your 'ton' in years. Upon my arrival as a graduate student in September 1965 we had a long and memorable conversation about various societal issues in the US. It was apparent that you possessed a strong moral compass as you described the consequences for the students arrested during the Free Speech Movement a year earlier. In the years that followed you guided me past my comfort zones with respect to my knowledge and technical skills. You also suggested that I search broadly beyond my optometric background following graduation by use of the sentiment behind 'squatters rights' in Australian history to work toward acceptance and employment in another discipline such as experimental psychology. Over the years you provided important guidance and advice at particular career junction points. I am forever indebted to you for your advice and the for the opportunity to work in your lab and more generally thank you profusely for your many important contributions to optometry and to basic research in vision science.

– Donald Mitchell, Dalhousie University

My recollections go back almost 50 of those years. From your neurophysiology lectures to my optometry class in the late 1970s (I can't read 'synaptic bouton' without hearing your voice), through trying to understand Maxwellian view, through your visit back to OSU and dinner with Fred Hebbard, to our recent emails about ideas on myopia control -- you have always been a model of achievement, integrity, and making the complex accessible. Thank you for the gift of your career.

– Donald Mutti, The Ohio State University College of Optometry

Dear Dr. Westheimer,

An enormous congratulations on 100 years! I am forever grateful that you took me into your lab in the late 1990's. My first scientific poster and first scientific publication was with your mentorship and those experiences were the impetus for me to pursue graduate studies. As I met you late in your career, as a young undergraduate I had no idea of the impact you had on the fields of psychophysics and visual neuroscience until later in my own career. As well, your pride and positivity for the profession of optometry itself (even outside of academia) as always been an inspiration. Your precision and care in scientific writing continue to amaze me and I will be lucky to be even as half as sharp and witty as you in my lifetime! Blessings to you and all of the lives, inside and outside of academia, that you have touched. We are all better for you in our lives (and in the literature :-).

– Jason S. Ng, Southern California College

Dear Gerald,

From living in Germany on and off since 2008 I’ve learned that it's bad luck to wish someone a happy birthday prior to the date. I suppose your Australian-ness means you do not have any truck with such superstition, but to be sure, to be sure, let me now express my admiration and give my best wishes for the days leading up to the day, and for all the days after.

I suppose you know you that after 13 May, you should get a letter from King Charles giving his congratulations.

You are already immortalized on the internet, in your Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Westheimer) and in your Neurotree entry (https://neurotree.org/neurotree/tree.php?pid=202). Such is my admiration for you, I’ve made nearly 50% of the edits on the former and 20% on the latter. Your Wikipedia page has an average of six views per day (nearly 60 on the day of Denis’s message). Your Neurotree entry shows you have at least 11 academic children and 99 academic grandchildren.

– Robert P. O'Shea, Leipzig University

Happy 100th birthday Gerald! My appreciation for your devotion to vision sciences and the knowledge you have shared to the community!

– Sotiris Plainis, University of Crete

Dear Gerald:

Congratulations on this momentous occasion. I feel privileged to have known you since entering the Optometry program in 1962.

My very best,

Kenneth Polse, University of California, Berkeley

Wonderful to celebrate your commitment to UCB optometry.

– Clayton Radke, UC Berkeley

Sending best wishes to a friend, musician, baker and scientist.

– Larissa Seto, Former Assistant in Gerald's Lab

Dear Gerald,

I am really sorry I can’t be there in person.

I first met you 50 years or so ago as a young, feckless new member of the old VisB Study Section that you chaired. I had no idea what I was doing. For some reason, you took me seriously and acted as a sort of mentor to me so that I didn’t embarrass myself too badly as a reviewer. (Maybe you don’t remember so well, because this was a common process for you acting as mentor, but it meant a lot to me.) Your combination of wit and wisdom taught me a lot and also made meetings that would otherwise be soporific quite interesting.

Geography and differences in research interests have limited our interactions ever since, but I always enjoyed opportunities to meet with you and reminisce. Congratulations on your achievements along many dimensions, your longevity and consistent scholarly excellence, and positive impact on the field of vision. You are also an inspiration: I have hopes to continue doing my thing when I’m 100…

– Murray Sherman, University of Chicago

Gerald Westheimer's family came to Sydney, where I have spent my life, as a young refugee from war and holocaust in Europe. I knew him as a distant bur warm and generous colleague in visual science - distant because, although Australia was a great country-of-refuge 90 years ago, it was small in population, and smaller still in it sciences and Gerald was among many Australians of that time who gained eminence in their fields, but in the USA or in post-war Europe. However, he gained his basic Optometry qualifications at a technical college in Sydney (now a full, top-100 university, the University of NSW) and he always remembered and valued the refuge and training that this country had provided. He visited Sydney often, maintaining life-long friendships, even as his eminence grew. It is wonderful that he has reached this milestone, and I send warmest greetings.

– Jonathan Stone

All best wishes and thank you for all your contributions to our field.

– Jim Thomas, UCLA

Mucho Congrats to Gerald, a very dear friend, colleague and mentor. Best wishes always and see you soon, Gerald!

– Daniel Ts'o, SUNY Upstate Medical University

Dear Gerald,

You have been an inspiration to me since we first met at Helmholtz Club when I was a graduate student. I vividly remember walking to the restaurant that evening and hearing you talk about how you were learning quantum computing in your old age. I thought, 'Wow. That's who I want to be when I retire.' The Christian Tetztlaff Bach concert at Berkeley that you attended in carne and I no less joyously through your lovely note & cd afterwards will always be a source of warmest memory to me. And of course, the Everest of understanding stereo remains. I hope we can show you some data soon!

Happy Birthday dearest Gerald!

– Doris Tsao

Dear Gerald,

I think you know how much I’ve admired your mental precision and contributions to the field over so many decades, but let me reiterate it on this occasion. From your early oculomotor studies to the launching of the spatial frequency revolution to your extensive studies od stereopsis to the adaptive properties of the cortex, and so on, you’ve always kept us on our toes trying to keep up with your ideas and discoveries!

Following your milestone, we should definitely add you to the Wikipedia page of Centenarian Scientists, which is lacking any visual neuroscientists to date.

– Christopher W. Tyler, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute

All my best wishes and congratulations to Dr. Westheimer for his immense contributions to the substance and spirit of vision research.

His work and approach -- both directly and multiplied via his amazing legacy of trainees -- is truly inspirational to generations.

– Jonathan D. Victor, Weill Cornell Medical College

For Gerald.

As we both turn 100 this year, I am thrilled (it is indeed great) that we both have reached this milestone year close together, celebrating 70 years of our friendship. Gerald himself has defined our dear friendship as one of affinity, which is probably the best way to describe our relationship:

From our love of music from Bach to now but maybe not all of (some)contemporary music (once I brought Gerald to an avant-garde jazz concert at which he felt “pummelled” by Braxton et al.) ; our views on politics are pretty much in tune; our perspective on issues of the brain are different but nonetheless shared; our appreciation for excellent cuisine (though he still has, as promised, to take me to the French Laundry); to our need for privacy is absolute.

Gerald, you are a unique specimen, always anew in your views and comments on the world around us - no one can escape your acute observations and sharp mind. You are indeed a real friend, always close to my heart.

Happy birthday,

– Torsten Wiesel, Rockefeller University

It has always been a pleasure discussing the eye with you over nearly half your life now and two-thirds of mine. But even the pearls of wisdom I harvested from those conversations pale in comparison with your having encouraged Junzhong Liang to move from your laboratory to mine three decades ago, which launched adaptive optics for the eye at Rochester, transforming so many careers since. But the mechanism of cone phototropism remains a mystery-we need to talk. Happy Birthday, Gerald.

– David R. Williams, University of Rochester

Dear Gerald,

Happy 100th Birthday! It has been a great joy knowing you and learning from your work over the years. Fran and I are looking forward to joining your celebration on April 14 via zoom.

With all best wishes for happy, healthy, and productive years ahead!

Warmly,

– Hugh Wilson, Professor Emeritus, York University, Toronto

I am very sorry not to be at this celebration in person. Gerald Westheimer has been showing me the way for over 45 years. When I met him, in my graduate student days in about 1979, I showed him my new discovery in the Fourier description of spatial vision and he showed me that I had, in fact, rediscovered one of his results from the 1960s. Flash forward to my most recent visit to Berkeley where Gerald, in his 90s, insisted on walking me across campus because he didn’t want me to get lost. Of course, the real illumination that he has provided for us is found in his scholarship; all those beautiful papers on aspects of spatial vision. His 1979 Proctor Lecture was required reading in grad school and his 2023 paper in JoV shows him still making fascinating contributions as he enters his second century. May he go from strength to strength.

Jeremy M. Wolfe, Brigham and Women's Hospital / Harvard Medical School

Dear Gerald,

Congratulations! Sorry that I cannot join the celebration in person, but I will be with the celebration in spirit via live stream. Thank you very much for all the mentoring and the inspirations for high quality, hands-on, science.

Yours,

– Zhaoping, Li Zhaoping, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, University of Tübingen