Scientist, inventor and man of practical affairs, Edwin Herbert Land has penetrated the mysteries of light, color and vision and brought his discoveries to bear upon the happiness and welfare of his fellow men.
Endowed with an extraordinary talent for original and creative thought, he has repeatedly surmounted the limits of conventional wisdom and charted new and innovative paths to knowledge. Establishing his first laboratory while still a young student, he left the confines of formal collegiate education to pursue his own exploration of polarized light, human vision and theory of color. His high achievements have now been recognized and honored by many outstanding institutions of higher learning and research. He has applied his scientific insights to useful purposes in many and varied forms, of which his widely known innovations in photography are but one. As a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee and as a Visiting Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he has lent
his talents to the solution of problems of high national import and to the stimulation and education of youth. Aware of the threat of mass boredom and mental stagnation in modern, industrialized society, he has encouraged his young associates and employees to seek the stimulus of creativity by engaging in their own projects of original research.
At a time when the complexity and urgency of human problems demand, perhaps as never before, the exercise of that creative thinking which he so well personifies, the Cosmos Club is proud to designate Edwin Herbert Land as Recipient of the Cosmos Club Award of 1970.
