Juris Upatnieks

Who is Juris Upatnieks?

Juris Upatnieks is a Latvian-American physicist and inventor, and pioneer in the field of holography.

Upatnieks fled the Soviet occupation of Latvia with his parents at the close of World War II, seeking asylum in Germany. In 1951 the family emigrated to the United States. He attended high school in Akron, Ohio, and studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Akron, where he was awarded a Bachelor Degree in 1960. Thereafter he studied at the Institute of Science and Technology of the University of Michigan, where he earned a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1965. From 1973 to 1993 he worked at the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan and was an Adjunct Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. There he taught a laboratory course in optics until 1996. From 1993 to 2001 he was a consultant with Applied Optics in Ann Arbor. From 1996 to 2001 he was also a researcher with the faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Michigan.

In 1964 he demonstrated, with Emmett Leith, the first three-dimensional holograms in the United States and together with Leith published a series of technical papers from 1962 to 1964.