Stanley S. Ballard

1963 OSA President Stanley S. Ballard (1908–1998) obtained his PhD and MSc in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his undergraduate degree from Pomona College. He taught physics at Dartmouth College and the University of Hawaii before serving in the US Naval Reserves from 1941-1946. In 1946, he was chief of the radiometry section for the atom bomb tests at Bikini Atoll.

After the war he spent eight years as professor of physics and department chairman at Tufts University, and from there served as executive secretary of the Armed Forces National Research Council on Vision in 1959. He then moved to Florida and took a position as professor of physics at the University of Florida, and was subsequently promoted to department head, chairman of the department of physics, and Distinguished Service Professor. He retired in 1981 and was made Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Ballard encouraged OSA to become more internationally involved, and to reach out to other scientific fields related to optics. Primarily because of his efforts, OSA established a central office in Washington, D.C. and started Applied Optics. In 1948, Ballard was one of the four U.S. representatives to attend the first ICO general meeting, held in the Netherlands. 

Ballard was a Fellow of OSA, APS, SPIE, AAAS, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and the British Physical Society. Among his many honors are the King of Sweden's Royal Order of the North Star (1972), AAPT's Distinguished Service Citation (1975), OSA's Distinguished Service Award (1977), the Florida Academy of Science Medal (1979), and the President's Medallion from the Univ. of Florida (1982). He co-authored the books, Polarized Light (with William A. Shurcliff) and Physics Principles (with Edgar P. Slack and Erich Hausmann).