Albert Einstein and the Ophthalmologist
Allvar Gullstrand died in 1930, one of the most recognized ophthalmologists who ever lived, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1911 for his work on “dioptrics of the eye”.
Born in 1862, Gullstrand is also the only person to win the prize and also decline it, for, in 1911, the committee for the Nobel Prize in Physics suggested he receive their prize. He declined in favor of the prize in medicine. It was probably a good decision since the prominent Swede was a member of the Nobel Physics committee that year.
Although self-taught, Gullstrand was no dabbler when it came to physics or mathematics. In his work, he treated the eye like a “miniature camera”. He developed several instruments, still used today, to measure the precise parameters of the lens and cornea and, feeding these into mathematical equations, came up with an extremely accurate model of the eye.
He published this work as an Appendix in Von Helmholtz’s Treatise on Physiological Optics. It was for this work that he was offered Nobel Prizes in medicine and physics.
His mathematical acumen was not limited to optics. He was perfectly comfortable solving the Einstein equations…
