William P Ewald graduated from the University of Rochester. He served as a lecturer at the Institute of Optics there. After service in the Navy during World War II, he joined Eastman Kodak Company. He spent the next 38 years there, earning numerous patents. He received OSA’s David Richardson Medal in 1979 “for his numerous contributions to applied optics, particularly to the fields of projection and stereoscopy, as well as his inspired service as a teacher and consultant both within the Eastman Kodak Company and to the optics community in general.”