Perley G. Nutting

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Perley Gilman Nutting (1873–1949) was an American physicist who specialized in optics. He founded the Optical Society of America (OSA) and served as its first president from 1916 to 1917; the OSA is today known as Optica.

Nutting was born on August 22, 1873, in Randolph, Wisconsin. He studied at Stanford University (BA, 1897), the University of California, Berkeley (MA, 1899), and Cornell University (PhD, 1903). He began working as a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards in 1903.

There is a claim that Nutting built one of the first neon signs in 1904, displayed at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, but this claim is disputed. In 1910 he joined Eastman Kodak Company, before Kodak’s first research director Kenneth Mees arrived in 1912. He wrote the 1912 book Outlines of Applied Optics, which called for more formal study of applied optics.

In 1915 Nutting organized meetings of Rochester-area physicists that led to the founding of the Optical Society of America in January 1916. He left Kodak for Westinghouse Electric Company in 1917. In 1924 he returned to government work with the United States Geological Survey, where he stayed until his retirement in 1943.

Nutting died on August 8, 1949. His son, Perley G. Nutting Jr., was known as observer PGN for the MacAdam ellipse demonstrations.