Biographical Memoirs Volume 46 (1975) / Chapter Skim
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3. Clarence Henry Graham
3. Clarence Henry Graham
Pages 70-89
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From page 71... ...
Psychophysical and electrophysiological experiments on retinal interaction effects occupied his attention in the 1930's at Clark University. In the 1940's at Brown University he explored animal and human vision by a variety of behavioral techniques and made significant contributions to military problems of visual surveillance and selection of personnel during the Second World War.
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From page 72... ...
From his birth in 1906 until his doctorate in 1930 Graham remained in Worcester, Massachusetts. His parents had emigrated from County Donegal in Ireland, and his father was a skilled metal worker in a Worcester factory.
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From page 73... ...
Graham soon found himself drawn into the graduate program of research, and his formal enrollment in the graduate program followed immediately the attainment of his undergraduate degree. Walter Hunter was the strongest figure of the group, a benevolent dictator who was to be Graham's chief mentor, not only in these years at Clark but also, later on, at Brown.
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From page 74... ...
This sort of thinking led Graham to use one of the standard psychophysical methods, in which the subject is forced to say "Yes" or "no" with respect to his perception of very weak stimuli, in determining binocular summation in the fovea at threshold (1930~. Furthermore, the nature of that problem was such that physiological explanations were required.
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From page 75... ...
During that year Graham also found time to take a course with Jacobs on the quantitative treatment of experimental data in general physiology. This completed the formal training of Clarence Graham for his lifework of teaching and research in vision, with emphasis on quantification and physiological interpretation of the data.
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From page 76... ...
When Hunter was called to the chairmanship at Brown in 1936, he took Graham with him to represent sensory and physiological psychology in a department that had already achieved a considerable status in experimental psychology under the preceding head, Leonard Carmichael. Together with Schlosberg, Hunt, and Kemp they taught large numbers of undergraduates and gradually expanded the graduate program of seminars and research.
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From page 77... ...
The five years at Brown preceding the Second World War Graham has called "some of the happiest of my life." Those joining the staff included Donald Lindsley, Lorrin Rims, and Carl Pfaffmann. Graduate students brought Into the Graham orbit of research included Fred Mote, Robert Gagne, Neil Bartlett, Conrad Mueller, and William Verplanck.
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From page 78... ...
V Lloyd, George Long, Barbara Mates, Leonard Matin, Conrad Mueller, Celeste McCullough, Joel Pokorny, loan Pollock, Philburn Ratoosh, Vivianne Smith, Harry Sperling, Florence Veniar, Gary Yonemura, and Richard Zegers.
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From page 79... ...
A memorial service was held on August 6 at which many of his former students, friends, and associates paid tribute to his memory. Among the honors accorded him during his lifetime are the following: Howard Crosby Warren Medal, Society of Experimental Psychologists, 1941; election to the National Academy of Sciences, 1946; Presidential Certificate of Merit, 1948; Honorary Sc.D.
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From page 80... ...
the subject's responses." In a later chapter, Graham quotes Skinner, with respect to the names that are attached to hues, as follows: "If the person says 'green' to light of wavelength 530 me, such a response obtains social approval; it is the 'correct response.' " The point of all this is to approach the entire subject of color vision with the aim of avoiding the ambiguities that might creep in if anything so personal and subjective as color naming were to be used as a major source of information. Instead, Graham emphasized that truly scientific studies of color vision must fulfill the criteria of objectivity.
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From page 81... ...
The instructions should typically limit the subject to two possible responses, such as "match" or "mismatch" in the case of color judgments and "seen" or "not seen" in determining a threshold. Standard psychophysical procedures may then be used to estimate the critical value of the stimulus at which the judgment shifts from one category to the other; this value yields a quantitative definition of the subject's sensory discrimination.
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From page 82... ...
degree under his direction learned that hard work and generosity were part of the game, but compromise, never. By the wider community of scholars Graham will be remembered for his high scientific standards and for his dedication to the fields of vision and visual perception.
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From page 83... ...
Nafe. 1930 Human intensity discrimination with the Watson-Yerkes apparatus.
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From page 84... ...
The relation of nerve response and retinal potential to number of sense cells illuminated in an eye lacking lateral connections.
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From page 85... ...
Factors influencing thresholds for monocular movement parallax.
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From page 86... ...
Hsia. Luminosity curves for normal and dichromatic subjects including a case of unilateral color-blindness.
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From page 87... ...
Hsia. The spectral luminosity curves for a dichromatic eye and a normal eye in the same person.
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From page 88... ...
Hsia. Some visual functions of a unilaterally dichromatic subject.
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From page 89... ...
Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, 39:541-72. New York, Columbia University Press.
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