Scholar, educator, and philanthropist Herschel Leibowitz is widely recognized for his research in visual perception and for his symbiotic approach to conducting research that both advanced theory and helped in the understanding and relief of societal problems. His research on transportation safety included studies of nearsightedness during night driving, vision during civil twilight, an illusion that underlies the behavior of motorists involved in auto-train collisions, susceptibility of pilots to illusions caused by visual-vestibular interactions, and the design of aircraft instrument panels.
Life, education and career Herschel Leibowitz was the only child of Lewis and Nettie Wolfson Leibowitz. He was born and raised in York, Pennsylvania and attended school in York. He later earned his B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania and M.A. (Experimental Psychology) and Ph.D. (Physiology) at Columbia University. Leibowitz's early studies at University of Pennsylvania were interrupted by World War II. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II, 75th Infantry Division, European Theater, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He studied at the Sorbonne during his military service, and then resumed his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He later earned his M.A. (Experimental Psychology) and his Ph.D. (Physiology) from Columbia University under the guidance of Clarence Graham. Leibowitz's dissertation explored the effect of pupil size on visual acuity for photometrically matched stimuli. In 1949, he married the former Eileen Wirtshafter. They had two children, Marjorie (1950) and Michael (1953). He began his career as a faculty member in the Department of Neurophysiology at the University of Wisconsin (1951–1960). Following this, Leibowitz was an advisory psychologist and manager of behavioral research at IBM (1960–1962). He returned to academia in 1962 as a member of the Department of Psychology at The Pennsylvania State University where he was named Evan Pugh Professor in 1977. He retired from Penn State in 1995. By the time of his retirement in 1995 Leibowitz had published more than 250 articles in scientific journals and had been recognized as one of the most influential researchers in perception (White, 1987). He was also a tireless advocate for psychological science. Once when offering testimony to a Congressional committee, Leibowitz pointed out that the military was investing less annually in human factors research than the cost of a single aviation mishap despite the fact that the military was blaming many such mishaps on human error. His extended family of former graduate students and colleagues gathered in State College on several occasions for LeiboFest celebrations of science, friendship, and mentorship. The book “Visual Perception: The Influence of H.W. Leibowitz” was written by his students and close colleagues in 2002; the book contains pearls of wisdom that continue to prove useful. In general, Leibowitz enjoyed bringing into the laboratory the visual challenges that are routinely faced by people in highly demanding situations. Leibowitz also became an avid runner; he was 50 when he completed the first of his 15 marathons. You can read more about Hersh from his family, friends, colleagues and students on posterous Archived 2011-07-15 at the Wayback Machine and Facebook.
Research Leibowitz's research investigated basic issues of visual psychophysics, perception of size, distance & motion, peripheral vision and oculomotor functioning. He also studied problems of aviation, traffic safety, motion sickness, postural instability (especially during stair descent), and the effects of stress on perception. Indeed, one of the striking characteristics of Leibowitz's research was his symbiotic view of “basic” and “applied” science. In the early 1970s, for example, Leibowitz's lab developed the laser optometer and used it to advance our basic understanding of the eyes’ focusing behavior (visual accommodation); these “basic” experiments simultaneously addressed real-world difficulties such as night myopia (Leibowitz & Owens, 1978) and visual fatigue (Tyrrell & Leibowitz, 1990). He also connected advances in visual psychophysics and neuroscience with a wide range of matters in health science, national defense, child development, and transportation safety. He proposed that the hazards of night driving, for example, can be better understood through the neurological concept of two visual systems, explaining drivers’ over-confidence at night as resulting from sustained efficiency of visual guidance combined with selective degradation of focal recognition abilities (Leibowitz, Shupert & Post, 1985). A defining characteristic of Leibowitz's approach to science was his enthusiasm for cultivating the development of younger scientists. He encouraged his graduate students to indulge their curiosity (“study what bugs you!”), while always insisting on attention to his favorite question “Why is that important?” Leibowitz loved inter-disciplinary collaboration and he built productive friendships with colleagues in fields ranging from anthropology to zoology, including athletics, biomechanics, health science, law, physiology, and physics.
Accomplishments
Author Leibowitz is the author of more than 250 articles in scholarly publications, in addition to a book, "Visual Perception" (1965). In 2002, the book "Visual Perception: The Influence of Herschel W. Leibowitz" was written by several of his former students and published in his honor. Hersh always said that his greatest professional achievement was the number of students who passed through his classroom on their way to success in psychology and other fields. Over the years his former students have returned to Penn State to celebrate Hersh and his continuing influence on them.
Editor Leibowitz served on the editorial board of Psychological Research (1965–88) and Perception and Psychophysics (1969–93). He was a consulting editor for International Journal of Vision Research, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychological Bulletin, SCIENCE, Behavior Research Methods and Instrumentation, Contemporary Psychology, Human Factors, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
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