News has just come in that one of the doyens of the world of optometry research has died. Brian Brown was an Australian optometrist whose career was dedicated to research. He is known to hundreds of people around the world who have collaborated with him in his research or whose research training he supervised.
He remains almost unknown in UK optometry although he laid many foundations we all use. For example, the pioneering work of Kate and Paul Gifford on myopia in Brisbane, and Pauline Cho in Hong Kong, would probably not have blossomed had Queensland University of Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic University not become such strong research bases under Brian’s inspire leadership thirty years earlier
I first met Brian in 1983 when I was a graduate student at the University of Melbourne and although I had read one of his papers during my pre-reg year I was, to be honest, struggling to find direction after a year or so of clinical research.
Brian had this knack of bringing focus to young researchers’ projects whilst having confidence in their own abilities. Thanks to Brian, who by then had returned to Australia after ten years at Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute in San Francisco, my work improved and I duly gained my MScOptom in 1986.
Brian himself was a very early PhD optometrist from the University of Melbourne, a place that has spawned and inspired educators and researchers all over the world. He worked for a short while at City University and was an older contemporary of Brien Holden and Ian Bailey to name but two.
At a time when sufferers of ARMD were unceremoniously discharged from ophthalmology clinics “there is nothing more we can do” Brian and his collaborators developed the research that underpins our understanding of the effects of this condition on visual function.
Isaac Newton once said that we see further standing in the shoulders of giants, Brian was one of those, albeit an unsung understated one. RIP Brian.
Readers interested in Brian’s more detailed biography can turn to this reference:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2011.00626.x