Elliot Quincy Adams (September 13, 1888 – March 12, 1971) was an American scientist. Chemist

Gilbert N. Lewis Gilbert Newton Lewis (October 23 or October 25, 1875 – March 23, 1946) was an American physical chemist and a Dean of the College of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bond a ...

remarked that "the two most profound scientific minds, among the people he had known, were those of E liotQ Adams and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theor ...

."D S Tarbell, "Elliot Quincy Adams (1888-1971): From dipolar ions to fluorescent lights." ''Journal of Chemical Education,'' 67:7-8 (1990). Adams was the son of Edward Perkins and Etta Medora (Elliot) Adams, and a descendant of John Adams, circa 1650 from

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

. He graduated from Medford High School in

Medford, Massachusetts Medford is a city northwest of downtown Boston on the Mystic River in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the time of the 2020 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 59,659. It is home to Tufts University, which has its campus al ...

, and attended the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

, studying

chemical engineering Chemical engineering is an engineering field which deals with the study of operation and design of chemical plants as well as methods of improving production. Chemical engineers develop economical commercial processes to convert raw materials in ...

under

(1875–1946), and in 1909 earned his bachelor's degree in

. After graduation, Adams took a position with the

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

Research Laboratory in

Schenectady, New York Schenectady () is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-largest city by population. The city is in eastern New Yo ...

, where he worked with Irving Langmuir on problems dealing with heat transfer. In 1912 Adams supplied the simple mathematical formula that is used to describe the conduction-convection loss from an incandescent filament operated in a gaseous atmosphere, and in the same year moved to

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

, for doctoral studies at the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Fran ...

. In 1914 he earned his Ph.D.under the direction of

. In 1917 Adams moved to Washington, D. C., to perform research in the Color Laboratory in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From 1921-1949, when he retired, he worked for

at Nela Park,

East Cleveland, Ohio East Cleveland is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and is the first suburb encountered when travelling east from Cleveland. The population was 13,792 at the 2020 census. East Cleveland is bounded by the city of Cleveland to its nor ...

. He made a seminal contribution to color science in his 1942 paper, "X-Z planes in the 1931 I.C.I. system of colorimetry."E. Q. Adams, "X-Z planes in the 1931 I.C.I. system of colorimetry," ''Journal of the Optical Society of America'', 32:3, p 168-173 (March, 1942). In this paper, he provides two models for

perceptually uniform In color science, color difference or color distance is the separation between two colors. This metric allows quantified examination of a notion that formerly could only be described with adjectives. Quantification of these properties is of gre ...

color spaces. One, which he termed "chromatic value," was the precursor of the modern CIELAB uniform color space; the other, which he termed " chromatic valence," was the direct ancestor of the Hunter Lab color space, and provided the elements of today's

CIELUV In colorimetry, the CIE 1976 ''L''*, ''u''*, ''v''* color space, commonly known by its abbreviation CIELUV, is a color space adopted by the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) in 1976, as a simple-to-compute transformation of the 1931 ...

. This paper showed how relatively simple transformations from XYZ of Munsell colors can have relatively uniform spacing of hue and chroma. Adams was a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

, American Physical Society,

Mineralogical Society of America The Mineralogical Society of America (MSA) is a scientific membership organization. MSA was founded in 1919 for the advancement of mineralogy, crystallography, geochemistry, and petrology, and promotion of their uses in other sciences, industry, ...

, and the Illuminating Engineering Society. In 1941 he was presented the

Silver Beaver Award The Silver Beaver Award is the council-level distinguished service award of the Boy Scouts of America. Upon nomination by their local Scout council and with the approval of the National Court of Honor, recipients of this award are registered adu ...

by the

Boy Scouts of America The Boy Scouts of America (BSA, colloquially the Boy Scouts) is one of the largest scouting organizations and one of the largest List of youth organizations, youth organizations in the United States, with about 1.2 million youth partici ...

. Perhaps his best recognized effort was the book, coauthored with W. E. Forsythe, titled ''Fluorescent and Other Gaseous Discharge Lamps''.

References

;General
Frognet entry

American Mineralogist: Charter Fellows of the Mineralogical Society of America
* Edward J. Covington, ''Makers of National - The Spirit and People of an Industrial Organization'', Printed by Graphic Communications Operation, GE Lighting, Nela Park, E. Cleveland, OH 44112, 1997. {{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Elliot Quincy 1888 births 1971 deaths 20th-century American chemists Color scientists MIT School of Engineering alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni