Early career Land studied physics, specifically optics, at
Harvard University but left after his freshman year and moved to
New York City. There he invented the first inexpensive filters capable of
polarizing light, which he called
Polaroid film. He was not associated with an educational institution and lacked the tools of a proper laboratory, making this a difficult endeavor, so he would sneak into a laboratory at
Columbia University late at night to use their equipment. Despite not receiving a college degree, he was still referred to from many as Dr. Land. According to biographer Peter Wensberg, once Land could see the solution to a problem in his head, he lost all motivation to write it down or prove his vision to others. Often his wife, Terre, would extract from him the answers to homework problems, at the prodding of his instructor. She would then write up the homework and hand it in so that he could receive credit and not fail the course.
Polaroid In 1932, he established the Land-Wheelwright Laboratories together with his Harvard physics professor, George Wheelwright III, to commercialize his polarizing technology. Wheelwright came from a family of financial means and agreed to fund the company. After a few early successes developing polarizing filters for sunglasses and photographic filters, Land obtained funding from a series of
Wall Street investors for further expansion. After this trip, research for the development of this idea began immediately. A little more than three years later, on February 21, 1947, Land demonstrated an
instant camera and associated film to the
Optical Society of America. Called the
Land Camera, it was in commercial sale less than two years later. Polaroid originally manufactured sixty units of this first camera. Fifty-seven were put up for sale at the
Jordan Marsh department store in
Boston before the 1948 Christmas holiday. Polaroid marketers incorrectly guessed that the camera and film would remain in stock long enough to manufacture a second run based on customer demand. All fifty-seven cameras and all of the film were sold on the first day of demonstrations. During his time at Polaroid, Land was notorious for his marathon research sessions. When Land conceived of an idea, he would experiment and brainstorm until the problem was solved with no breaks of any kind. He needed to have food brought to him and to be reminded to eat.
Contributions to photo intelligence Beginning in the early years of the Cold War, Land played a major role in the development of photographic reconnaissance and intelligence gathering efforts. Projects included the Genetrix balloon borne cameras, the
U-2 program,
Corona and Samos photographic satellites, and the
Manned Orbiting Laboratory. He was a frequent advisor to President
Dwight D. Eisenhower on photographic reconnaissance matters.
Later career In the 1950s,
James G. Baker, Land, and his team helped design the optics of the revolutionary
Lockheed U-2 spy plane. He also contributed to the design of the plane with
Kelly Johnson. Also in this decade, Land first discovered a
two-color system for projecting the entire spectrum of hues with only two colors of projecting light (he later found more specifically that one could achieve the same effect using very narrow bands of 579 nm and 599 nm light). Some of this work was later incorporated in his Retinex theory of
color vision. In 1957,
Harvard University awarded him an honorary doctorate, and Edwin H. Land Blvd., a street in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, was later named in his memory. The street is at one end of
Memorial Drive, in Cambridge, where the Polaroid company headquarters building was located (over a mile west on Memorial Drive from Land Blvd.). Polaroid occupied several buildings in various places in Cambridge. In the early 1970s, starting with the previously known phenomenon of
color constancy, Land developed a new Retinex Theory of color vision. His popular demonstrations of color constancy raised much interest in the concept. He considered his leadership towards the development of integral instant
color photography – the
SX-70 film and camera – to be his crowning achievement. Although he led the Polaroid Corporation as a chief executive, Land was a scientist first and foremost, and as such made sure that he performed "an experiment each day". Despite holding no formal degree, employees, friends, and the press respected his scientific accomplishments by calling him Dr. Land. The only exception was
The Wall Street Journal, which refused to use that honorific title throughout his lifetime. He had an artistic vision. In his laboratory, he built
giant studio cameras the size of bedroom closets that produced large format (20 x 24 inch) prints. He gave photographers free access to these cameras in return for some of the prints they produced. This practice was continued by the company; the result was
the Polaroid Collection. Compiled since the 1970s, the collection grew to between 16,000 and 24,000 photos shot by some of the world's greatest artists and photographers, including
Ansel Adams,
Chuck Close,
Robert Frank and
Andy Warhol. The collection, an asset of the Polaroid Corporation, remained intact until 2010 when, in controversial circumstances, it was broken up and put up for sale in lots. Land resigned from his role as U.S. President
Richard Nixon's presidential advisor during the
Watergate scandal in 1973. He was one of the names in Nixon's notorious
list of political opponents, following the original top 20 enemies. Despite the tremendous success of his instant cameras, Land's
Polavision instant movie system was a financial disaster, and he resigned as Chairman of Polaroid on July 27, 1982. When he retired, he had 535 patents to his name, only surpassed by
Thomas Edison and
Elihu Thomson. While he was set for retirement years, this did not mean the end of his passion in research and decided to continue with his interest in color vision. From 1978, he was a regular visitor to the laboratory of
Semir Zeki at
University College London, to attend Zeki's experiments on color vision. Although they never published together, Land was to design the gelatin filters to accompany the paper on the physiology of color vision published by Zeki in
Nature in 1980. These filters, and especially the long-wave one, were later used to study details of the structure of
DNA. Before Land died, Zeki negotiated with the
Royal Society to take a page of the Royal Society Fellows Book for Land to sign in the United States, since he was too ill to attend the signing ceremony in London. It was signed at a small private ceremony in Land's home in Cambridge, Mass., attended by his son-in-law; the citations were read by Zeki and
Hugh Huxley admitted Land formally to the Society. The other Foreign Member of the Royal Society who also signed the book on the same occasion was
Ed Purcell, the discoverer of nuclear magnetic resonance and a friend of Edwin Land. It is reputed that the only other times that the book (or in this case a page of it) of the Royal Society was taken outside its house in London was when it was signed by
Sigmund Freud and
Winston Churchill, both in their homes in London. In his later years, Land founded the
Rowland Institute for Science where he found a vacant lot besides Charles River at Kendall Square. ==Death==