Optical information processing

Even 40 years after the first publication of these lecture notes “Optical information processing” is still a treasure chest for students, teachers as well as scientists in the field of optics. Adolf Lohmann’s unique style of presenting the foundations of information optics in a theoretically challenging yet vivid way guarantees new insight and enjoyment. Adolf Lohmann studied Physics at the University of Hamburg. From 1953-1963 he was assistant and associate Professor at the TU Braunschweig. He got the Habilitation in 1957 after research visits at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the IBM Research Center in San Jose, Ca. From 1963-1967 he lead the optical signal processing group at IBM in San Jose followed by an appointment as Professor of Applied Physics and Information Science at UCSD in La Jolla, Ca. From 1973 he had the Chair in Applied Optics at the University of Erlangen/Nürnberg. In 1990/91 he was on leave at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. After he reached the status “Emeritus” (retired Professor) in 1992 he spent numerous research visits at highly esteemed research groups all over the world. During more than 50 years of research Adolf Lohmann contributed to almost any field of modern optics. He pioneered work on the combination communication theory and optics, developed “single sideband holography” as well as “computer holography” which helped to trigger the successful development of diffractive optics. As a consultant at AT& T Bell Labs, New Jersey he invented the “Perfect Shuffle”. Although his dream of the “digital optical computer” did not become reality yet, the impact of “optics in computation systems” is reality. Since his retirement he enjoyed the independence by performing research in a variety of areas like fractional transformations, super resolution, optical processing with partially coherent light, “flatland optics” and optical temporal filtering, to name just a few. More that 350 publications and numerous scientific awards and honors are the evidence for an extraordinary carrier in optics.