Dorothea Jameson facts for kids

Dorothea Jameson (born November 16, 1920 – died April 12, 1998) was an important American scientist. She was a cognitive psychologist, which means she studied how people think and learn. She made big contributions to understanding how we see colors and how our vision works.

About Dorothea Jameson

Dorothea Jameson was born in Newton, Massachusetts. She attended Wellesley College. She chose to study psychology in her first year. She found it interesting that new students needed special permission to join the psychology program.

She graduated from Wellesley in 1942. While she was a student, she volunteered at Harvard. There, she worked as a research assistant. She also met her future husband, Leo Hurvich, at Harvard. They got married in 1948.

Later in her career, Dorothea Jameson became a full professor. This happened at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. She also received special honorary degrees. These were from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and the State University of New York in 1989.

Dorothea Jameson passed away on April 12, 1998. Her death was unexpected. It was caused by lung cancer that had not been found before.

How We See Color and Vision

Dorothea Jameson started studying vision while she was still in college. She worked as a research assistant at Harvard. Her work helped make visual rangefinders better. These tools were used during World War II.

She continued her vision studies at Harvard in 1947. At that time, Ralph Evans worked at Eastman Kodak. He was in charge of color control. Evans understood that seeing colors in the world and in photos depends on how our brains process information. So, he hired researchers like Jameson to study how we see.

In 1957, Jameson and her husband, Leo Hurvich, made a big discovery. They provided scientific data for a theory called the "opponent process" color theory. This theory explains that we see colors in pairs, like red-green and blue-yellow.

They developed a method called "hue cancellation." Imagine you have a yellow color. To cancel out the yellow, you would add its opponent color, blue. This method helped them measure how much of an opponent color was needed to make a color disappear.

In 1982, Jameson received an important award. It was the Edgar D. Tillyer Award from The Optical Society. She won it for her important work. Her research greatly improved our understanding of how our eyes and brains work together to see.