“One of the wonderful things about the camera is that you completely lose any sense of scale. It could be life-sized, it could be eighteen inches.”
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Edwin H. Land
Edwin Herbert Land, ForMemRS, FRPS, Hon.MRI was an American scientist and inventor, best known as the co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of color vision. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed i…
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business · American scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur (1909–1991) · inventor · entrepreneur · physicist · photographer · also Edwin H. Land, Edwin Land, Edwin Herbert Land, E. H. Land, Land
Born 7 May 1909 · Died 1 March 1991 · Q380134
41 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 1 entry
2012· 1 entry
Published “A program for annotating and predicting the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms, SnpEff” in Fly — cited 11,312 times.
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2010· 1 entry
Published “Prodigal: prokaryotic gene recognition and translation initiation site identification” in BMC Bioinformatics — cited 11,927 times.
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1991· 6 entries
Died 1991-03-01.
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Land died at the age of 81 in Cambridge, Massachusetts
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“If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it. So you make the system to fulfill that need, rather than starting the other way around, where you have something and wonder what to do with it.”
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“An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off.”
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“My motto is very personal and may not fit anyone else or any other company. It is: Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”
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“You always start with a fantasy. Part of the fantasy technique is to visualize something as perfect. Then with the experiments you work back from the fantasy to reality, hacking away at the components.”
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1988· 1 entry
Won National Medal of Technology and Innovation (1988).
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1986· 1 entry
Awarded Foreign Member of the Royal Society (1986).
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1979· 3 entries
Awarded Harvey Prize (1979).
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Won SPIE Gold Medal (1979).
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Awarded Harold Pender Award (1979).
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1977· 1 entry
Awarded National Inventors Hall of Fame (1977).
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1974· 1 entry
Won Perkin Medal (1974).
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1972· 1 entry
Founders Medal, National Academy of Engineering
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1971· 1 entry
Awarded Richtmyer Memorial Lecture Award (1971).
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1968· 2 entries
Led Polaroid to the forefront of the affirmative action movement
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Land made a large gift to MIT to fund initiatives for improving undergraduate education
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1967· 2 entries
Won Frederic Ives Medal (1967).
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Won National Medal of Science (1967).
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1965· 1 entry
Won IRI Medal (1965).
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1963· 3 entries
Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by Lyndon B. Johnson (1963).
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Awarded William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement (1963).
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The IRI Medal in 1965, the Perkin Medal in 1974, the Harold Pender Award in 1979, and the National Medal of Technology in 1988
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1957· 2 entries
Delivered an influential lecture on the importance of the technical university in the development of science and society
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Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate, and Edwin H
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1956· 1 entry
Won Howard N. Potts Medal (1956).
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1953· 1 entry
Elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences
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1949· 1 entry
Won Dennis Gabor Medal and Prize (1949).
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1948· 2 entries
Won Holley Medal (1948).
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And made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in one minute or less
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1947· 1 entry
Land demonstrated an instant camera and associated film to the Optical Society of America
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1945· 1 entry
Awarded Rumford Prize (1945).
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1938· 3 entries
Won Elliott Cresson Medal (1938).
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Awarded John Scott Award (1938).
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Elliott Cresson Medal, Franklin Institute of Philadelphia
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1932· 1 entry
Established the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories together with his Harvard physics professor, George Wheelwright III, to commercialize his polarizing technology
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1909· 2 entries
The son of Jewish parents Matie (née Goldfaden) and Harry Land
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Born 1909-05-07.
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