SIGNED NOBELIST Retinal Chemistry and the Physiology of Vision in Visual Problems of Colour TOGETHER WITH The Photoreceptor Process in Vision by Wald, George - 1955, 1958

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1955, 1958. First editions. 1950s

LANDMARK PUBLICATIONS ON THE BIOLOGY OF VISION BY NOBELIST GEORGE WALD AND HIS COLLEAGUE AND SPOUSE RUTH HUBBARD--SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS.

Visual Problems of Colour: two hardcover volumes 9 1/4 inches tall, printed green paper covered boards, green cloth spines, Vol. I, signature of Ruth Hubbard top of cover, frontis portrait of Selig Hecht, viii, 368 pp; Vol. II, signature of George Wald top of cover, [1], 369-749 pp. Browning to cover and page edges and light edge wear, binding tight, very good. Vol. I contains the Selig Hecht Commemorative Lecture by Professor George Wald, "Retinal Chemistry and the Physiology of Vision," pp 5-61, 23 figures, 104 references; and "On the Chromophores of the Visual Pigments" by Ruth Hubbard, pp 151-173. TOGETHER WITH offprint, "The Photoreceptor Process in Vision," American Journal of Ophthalmology, Vol. 40, No. 5, Part II, pp 18-41, November, 1955.

GEORGE WALD (1906 - 1997) was a member of the first graduating class of the Brooklyn Technical High School in New York in 1922. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from New York University in 1927 and his PhD in zoology from Columbia University in 1932. Wald traveled to Germany to work with Otto Heinrich Warburg where he identified vitamin A in the retina. He then went on to work in Zurich, Switzerland with the discoverer of vitamin A, Paul Karrer. After working briefly with Otto Fritz Meyerhof in Heidelberg, Germany, he left Europe for the University of Chicago in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power. In 1934, Wald went to Harvard University where he became an instructor, then professor. As a postdoctoral researcher, Wald discovered that vitamin A was a component of the retina. His further experiments showed that when the pigment rhodopsin was exposed to light, it yielded the protein opsin and a compound containing vitamin A. This suggested that vitamin A was essential in retinal function. In the 1950s, Wald and his colleagues used chemical methods to extract pigments from the retina. Then, using a spectrophotometer, they were able to measure the light absorbance of the pigments. Since the absorbance of light by retina pigments corresponds to the wavelengths that best activate photoreceptor cells, this experiment showed the wavelengths that the eye could best detect. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1950 and in 1967 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries in vision. Wald spoke out on many political and social issues and his fame as a Nobel laureate brought national and international attention to his views. He was a pacifist and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race.

RUTH HUBBARD (1924 – 2016) was a professor of biology at Harvard University, where she was the first woman to hold a tenured professorship position in biology. During her active research career from the 1940s to the 1960s, she made important contributions to the understanding of the biochemistry and photochemistry of vision in vertebrates and invertebrates. After receiving her PhD from Harvard, Ruth became a research fellow. She worked under George Wald, investigating the biochemistry of retinal and retinol, and were married in 1958. Together they built on the work that Wald had researched during a fellowship following his own doctorate degree. He had confirmed the long-held belief that vitamin A was related to vision. Not only did he find that light absorption liberated vitamin A, he also found an intermediate of the visual pigment rhodopsin and vitamin A. This intermediate was the base of Ruth's early work, where she attempted to determine the chemistry of the rhodopsin cycle. Wald shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1967 for his discoveries about how the eye works. In the same year, the pair was awarded the Paul Karrer Gold Medal specifically for their work with rhodopsin. Like her husband, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hubbard became interested in social and political dimensions of biological issues. In her book The Politics of Women's Biology, she wrote that she had been a "devout scientist" from 1947 until the late 1960s, but the Vietnam War and the women's liberation movement led her to change her priorities.