John F. Asmus

Born in Chicago, Illinois, to William F. and Eleanor Emma (Kocher) Asmus, the family moved to San Diego, California, in 1940. In the early 1950s, they moved to Montclair, California, where Asmus attended Chaffey High School. Asmus worked for General Atomic in La Jolla, until 1969, when he went to the Institute for Defense Analyses in Washington, D.C., remaining there for two years and moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1971 to work for Science Applications International Corporation. In 1974, he became a research physicist with the Institute for Pure and Applied Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. ==Pioneering use of lasers in art conservation==

In 1971, Asmus met oceanographer Walter Munk, who asked Asmus if he could make holograms of statues and art objects in Venice in order to preserve them. Through this process, Asmus discerned that he could use lasers to remove detritus encrusting the statues without harming the underlying works. That same year, Asmus worked with holography pioneer Ralph Wuerker, with whom he "proved the feasibility of creating full-size holograms of statuary, permitting three-dimensional reproductions of the world's sculptural masterpieces". Asmus continued working with Munk to create a three-dimensional record of the city of Venice in 1973, while continuing to investigate means of using lasers to clean statuary. In 1975, Asmus developed "supersensitive sonar detectors" to assist art historian Carlo Pedretti and other scientists searching for The Battle of Anghiari, a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci, at times referred to as "The Lost Leonardo", believed to be hidden beneath one of the later frescoes in the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five Hundred) in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. In 1978, Asmus used laser technology to uncover artwork in the California State Capitol building that had been repeatedly painted over since a 1939 remodeling, ultimately removing nine layers of paint to restore the original artwork. In the 1980s, Asmus "turned a personal fascination with the Mona Lisa into a five-year project to recapture the painting's original vitality". Pedretti had proposed that Leonardo had originally painted the Mona Lisa bare-breasted, and Asmus believed that he could determine whether this theory was correct, "using computer image enhancement techniques developed for interpreting satellite photographs". Asmus also determined that restorers had obscured mountains originally appearing in the background of the portrait, likely in order to emphasize foreground features. During this same period, Asmus also developed a plan to restore the Qin dynasty Terracotta Army in Xi'an, China, In 2016 Asmus revisited the Isleworth Mona Lisa with professors Vadim Parfenov and Jessie Elford, with the trio publishing the results of scientific examinations that established to their satisfaction that the same artist painted the face of both the Mona Lisa and the Isleworth Mona Lisa. In 2018, Asmus and Parfenov published findings on the application of the same technology to portraits by Rembrandt. ==Personal life and death==

In 1963, Asmus married Barbara Ann Flaherty, with whom he had two daughters. Barbara preceded him in death. Asmus died at his home in La Jolla, California, on Easter Sunday, 2024, at the age of 87. ==References==