John Guild

John Guild (1889–1979) was a British physicist specialized in optics, later transferred his focus on other studies. Guild worked at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) at Teddington in England. He was essential to the creation of the Colour Group in the United Kingdom. Later, he became the second chairman of the group from 1943 to 1945, and one of the first honorary members in 1966.

John Guild
Born	1889
Died	1979(1979-00-00) (aged 89–90)

Contributions

He is best known for collecting the data based on empirical evidence on the light sensitivity of the receptors and cones of the human eye.^[1] This work and the experiment of William David Wright is the foundation of the international standardization of color measurement, the CIE 1931 Standard Colorimetric Observer.^[2]

Other than his contributions to the standardization to colorimetry, he also contributed to a wide range of optical instruments and techniques. In 1924, he designed an optical instrument for the Optics Department of the National Physical Laboratory.^[3]

References

1. Guild, J. (1932). "The colorimetric properties of the spectrum". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical or Physical Character. 230 (681–693): 149–187. Bibcode:1932RSPTA.230..149G. doi:10.1098/rsta.1932.0005. JSTOR 91229. The trichromatic coefficients for [Wright's] ten observers agreed so closely with those of the seven observers examined at the National Physical Laboratory as to indicate that both groups must give results approximating more closely to 'normal' than might have been expected from the size of either group
2. Hunt, Robert (2014), "Guild, John", in Luo, Ronnier (ed.), Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 1–2, doi:10.1007/978-3-642-27851-8_291-1, ISBN 978-3-642-27851-8, retrieved 2025-01-03
3. Guild, J (November 1924). "An equipment for visual spectrophotometry". Transactions of the Optical Society. 26 (2): 74–94. Bibcode:1924TrOS...26...74G. doi:10.1088/1475-4878/26/2/303. ISSN 1475-4878. S2CID 120057819.