BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA -- SPIE Fellow Joseph W. Goodman has been awarded the 2011 Rudolf Kingslake Medal and Prize by SPIE for his June 2010 paper on speckle properties in the Society's journal Optical Engineering.

The medal is awarded annually in recognition of the journal's most noteworthy original paper on theoretical or experimental aspects of optical engineering.

Goodman will receive the award at SPIE Optics + Photonics in San Diego in August, where a special tribute conference has been organized to honor his career.

Goodman's paper and others that have earned the Rudolf Kingslake Medal since its inception in 1974 have been made open-access in the SPIE Digital Library throughout 2011, in recognition of publication this year of the 50th volume of Optical Engineering. For links to the open-access papers, visit bit.ly/kingslake.

Titled "Some properties of speckle from smooth objects," Goodman's paper examines bright-field imaging, dark-field imaging, and single-sideband imaging, exploring symmetry properties of the Fourier spectrum of speckle from smooth objects and the effects these symmetries have on image speckle contrast.

The paper presents "novel theoretical and computational findings of symmetry properties of the Fourier-plane spectrum of speckle from smooth surfaces," said Eustace Dereniak  (University of Arizona), Kingslake Award Committee chair.

Goodman is William Ayer Professor, Emeritus, at Stanford University, and cofounded Optivision and ONI Systems. He has received numerous honors in optics, including the SPIE Gold Medal in 2007, and has authored hundreds of research papers and several books on optics.

Goodman and his wife, Hon Mai Goodman, fund the biennial Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award recognizing recently published outstanding books in optics and photonics. The Goodman Book Writing Award, co-sponsored by SPIE and OSA, will be awarded next in 2012.

SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics, was founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. Serving more than 180,000 constituents from 168 countries, the Society advances emerging technologies through interdisciplinary information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent and career and professional growth. SPIE annually organizes and sponsors approximately 25 major technical forums, exhibitions and education programs in North America, Europe, Asia and the South Pacific. SPIE provided over $2.3 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2010.

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