Background
Robert Luther was born in 1868 in Moscow, Russia.
Robert Luther was born in 1868 in Moscow, Russia.
Robert attended grammar school in Moscow, Russia. Also, he studied chemistry at the University of Dorpat, in Tartu, Estonia.
From 1890 to 1891 Luther was an assistant to professor Fr. Beilstein in St. Petersburg, Russia. In 1896 he became an assistant to Ostwald in Leipzig, Germany. In 1901 he was named subdirector of the Institute for Physical Chemistry, which Ostwald had established. From 1906 to 1908 Luther directed the institute. Then, he became a professor of photography and director of the newly established Scientific Photography Institute of the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. He held this position until 1936. During which time the Dresden photographic industry grew considerably, due to his leadership. Luther wrote and co-wrote (with such researchers as Goldberg, Weigert and Waentig) numerous articles on his studies in photochemistry.
Luther was an important organizer of DGPh and its first director in 1930. Luther introduced a simple method for obtaining the characteristic curve of a photographic material (1910), and later developed the Luther theory concerning the spectral transmission of filters. His other research interests included three-dimensional photography (ca. World War I). In 1931, along with Goldberg, he presented the DIN sensitometry theory to the International Congress for Scientific and Applied Photography at Dresden.