Career
Warren Smith is world-renowned in the optics community as author of two editions of Modern Optical Engineering - The Design of Optical Systems, Modern Lens Design - A Resource Manual and Practical Optical Systems Layout. He is a Fellow of the The Optical Society, International Society for Optical Engineering and the OSSC. He taught optics courses for the University of Wisconsin, International Society for Optical Engineering, The Optical Society, and various companies and government agencies at worldwide locations. "Warren was a mentor who always listened, and was always very supportive," said Max Riedl, who worked with Smith at Infrared Industries in Santa Barbara, California. "A clear and critical thinker, he was never satisfied with "just" solving an optical problem.
During the 23 years we worked together, I never saw any of his designs that did not bring the predicted results." Born on 17 August 1922, Smith graduated from Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester.
After graduation, he worked for Eastman Kodak in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In 1946 he became Chief Optical Engineer at Simpson Optical Manufacturing Company in Chicago, Illinois, and in 1959 he moved Raytheon in Santa Barbara, California, where he was Manager of the Optics Section until 1962.
From 1962 until 1983 he was Director of R&Doctorate at Infrared Industries in Santa Barbara, and Vice President of R&Doctorate at Santa Barbara Applied Optics until 1987. After 1987, Warren Smith was the Chief Scientist at Kaiser Electro Optics in Carlsbad, California working part-time at the end of his career due to the demands of consulting, teaching, and expert witnessing, and writing the 3rd edition of his book Modern Optical Engineering.
Smith resided in Vista, California until his death on 19 June 2008.