Rank: David H. Rank

David H. Rank’s wide range of breakthroughs in the field of optics all came while working at Penn State, where the Pennsylvania native spent his entire career from the moment he joined the University as a graduate student in 1930 to his retirement in 1972. Rank's technical contributions were truly pioneering and spanned many fields of science, but among his biggest impacts were in high-precision infrared spectroscopy, such as devising more precise measuring techniques. This included the most accurate measurement of the velocity of light at the time (1952-1955) and demonstrating that the velocity is the same at optical and microwave frequencies. Along with this, Rank was a skilled optical designer of instruments ranging from telescopes to spectrographs. He designed an optical eyepiece for Edmund Scientific Corporation, the trademarked Rank-Kellner Eyepiece. This series of lenses enabled a wider field of view and was used in telescopes and microscopes made in the 1960s to 1980s.

His research also included precision detection of gases, such as the high-resolution studies of the spectra of gases of planets, the determination of maximum possible amount of hydrogen between the Earth and the Sun, and the study of the atmospheric abundance of nitrous oxide and methane. During World War II, he was a consulting engineer for the U.S. War Department and applied the then newly invented photomultiplier to detect, analyze, and identify components of synthetic gasolines used by enemy aircraft. In 1969, he received the highest honor of the Optical Society Association, the Fredrick Ives Medal/Jarus W. Quinn Prize.