Elliot Quincy Adams

Background

Adams, Elliot Quincy was born on September 13, 1888 in Medford, Massachusetts, United States. Son of Edward Perkins and Etta Medora (Elliot) Adams.

Education

He graduated from Medford High School in Medford, Massachusetts, and attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying chemical engineering under Gilbert North. Lewis (1875–1946), and in 1909 earned his bachelor"s degree in Chemical Engineering.

Career

Chemist Gilbert North. Lewis remarked that "the two most profound scientific minds, among the people he had known, were those of East Q Adams and Albert Einstein."

After graduation, Adams took a position with the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, where he worked with Irving Langmuir on problems dealing with heat transfer. In 1912 Adams supplied the simple mathematical formula that is used to describe the conduction-convection loss from an incandescent filament operated in a gaseous atmosphere, and in the same year moved to Berkeley, California, for doctoral studies at the University of California. In 1914 he earned his Doctor of Philosophy.under the direction of Gilbert North. Lewis.

In 1917 Adams moved to Washington, Doctorate. C., to perform research in the Color Laboratory in the Department of Agriculture.

From 1921-1949, when he retired, he worked for General Electric at Nela Park, East Cleveland, Ohio. He made a seminal contribution to color science in his 1942 paper, "X-Z planes in the 1931 Imperial Chemical Industries system of colorimetry." In this paper, he provides two models for perceptually uniform color spaces.

One, which he termed "chromatic value," was the precursor of the modern CIELAB uniform color space. The other, which he termed "chromatic valence," was the direct ancestor of the Hunter Laboratory color space, and provided the elements of today"s CIELUV. This paper showed how relatively simple transformations from XYZ of Munsell colors can have relatively uniform spacing of hue and chroma.

Adams was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, Mineralogical Society of America, and the Illuminating Engineering Society.

In 1941 he was presented the Silver Beaver Award by the Boy Scouts of America. Perhaps his best recognized effort was the book, coauthored with West. East. Forsythe, titled Fluorescent and Other Gaseous Discharge Lamps.

Achievements

• Elliot Quincy Adams has been listed as a noteworthy chemistry by Marquis Who's Who.

Membership

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Physical Society, Mineral. Society America; member American Chemical Society Optical Society American, Washington Academy Sciences, Universala Esperanto Asocio, Esperanto Association of North. American, Illuminating Engineering Society, Sigma Xi, Phi Lambda Upsilon.

Connections

Married Jane J. Pidgeon, June 28, 1922 (died May, 1947).

Father:

Edward Perkins Adams

Mother:

Etta Medora (Elliot) Adams

Spouse:

Jane J. Pidgeon