Interview: Mo Jalie - Visiting Professor at Ulster University

Optician You first wrote for Optician back in 1960 – what were you doing at the time?

Mo Jalie I was working for Stigmat Ltd (the Rolls Royce of lens manufacturers/Rx Houses at the time) where I had been sent by my father so that I could ‘learn about spectacle lenses from the bottom’. He told me that the dictionary definition of an optician is ‘one who is skilled in the art of making lenses’, a point I have made to generations of students during my teaching career. I was also in the second year of an evening course in dispensing optics at Northampton College of Advanced Technology (now the City University).