Contact Lens Pioneers May 13

 Tim Bowden and Andrew Gasson continue their series describing the life and work of most of the scientists and clinicians who have helped to develop contact lenses

 Frederick Burnett Hodd (1911-1999)

 Frederick (Freddie) Arthur Burnett Hodd came from an optical family and received an honours diploma from Northampton Polytechnic in 1939. He achieved a distinguished career in optics, although earlier plans to join his father's practice in Moorgate were interrupted by the war.
He enlisted in the army as a private and served in India, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was also awarded the MBE.
He started fitting contact lenses in the 1950s, sometimes using the consulting room set up by George Nissel (optician, March 18) in central London. He designed the Hodd-tapered lens which defined the degree of flattening for the peripheries of corneal lenses. In addition, he conceived the first continuously-flattening peripheral curve in advance of the lathing technology to manufacture it.
Hodd developed a particular interest in complex cases and was expert with scleral, toric and keratoconic fitting. A particular interest was the visual performance of bifocal contact lenses which formed the basis of his Presidential Address to the Contact Lens Society in October 1967.
Burnett Hodd was president of the British Optical Association from 1968-69 and 1977-78 and was instrumental in its change to the current College of Optometrists. He was also an examiner for the British Optical Association and the Spectacle Makers Company and maintained academic links with several of the UK's optical teaching institutions.
He was awarded the Herschel Medal from the ISCLS in 1976 and elected a life fellow of the College in 1990-1991.