Remembering John Greivenkamp

Larry C. Andrews

University of Central Florida, USA

I believe it was during the 1980s that I became a member of SPIE. There were only a handful of attendees at the first SPIE Orlando Conference I attended. Times have really changed since then.

I learned about SPIE’s book publishing program during the mid-1990s from meetings I had with Eric Pepper, then the Director of Publications. He encouraged me to consider SPIE Press as my publisher if I had any ideas for writing a book, which I did. Later I worked with Tim Lamkins, then SPIE Press Manager, in the same capacity. During several discussions with Tim about writing a second edition of one of my books with coauthor and longtime friend Ron Phillips, Tim mentioned a new book series that SPIE Press was planning to launch. The series would be called Field Guides, and John Greivenkamp was to serve as the Series Editor.

Tim introduced me to John at one of the SPIE Symposia in 2002. The three of us sat around a table for some time, while John described in great detail his vision for the Field Guides. These were to be handy reference booklets of around 100 pages or so on a major field of optical science, with concise explanations of a particular topic provided in 1–2 pages. The books would have a spiral binding so that they could open and lie flat on a table for viewing without closing by themselves, as most textbooks tend to do.

John was a Professor at the James C. Wyant College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. A project like this is something one might expect from a natural and seasoned educator like John. After listening to his enthusiastic vision of the Field Guide Series and hearing his suggestion that I write one in my area of expertise, I walked away knowing that I would write such a Field Guide.

John and I finished our Field Guides in roughly the same timeframe, and both were published in 2004 as the first and second in the Series. John’s book was FG01 Geometrical Optics and mine was FG02 Atmospheric Optics. John later approved two more Field Guides that I wanted to write: FG18 Special Functions (2011) and FG22 Probability, Random Processes, and Data Analysis (2012), the latter with my coauthor Ron Phillips. John also accepted a second edition of my Field Guide to Atmospheric Optics (FG41), published in 2019.

My advice to new members of SPIE is to consider what knowledge you can pass along to your colleagues in the form of research papers and/or books. I’ve heard from many people over the years that “I can’t write a book” or “I don’t have enough time for that.” You can always make the time if you want. Many of us have something to contribute to our particular area of expertise that will be useful to others. Don’t be afraid to try—you might surprise yourself.

I didn’t know John very well, having met him only a couple of times over the years. We lived on opposite sides of the country so our paths didn’t cross very often. Nonetheless, I know that John Greivenkamp as Series Editor of the Field Guides provided a tremendous service to SPIE with this endeavor and an important and useful resource for the optical sciences community to enjoy for many years.