Ian L Bailey, first research fellow in the National Vision Research Institute (NVRI)

Historical Significance: Ian Bailey graduated as an optometrist in 1961 in a remarkable class of 6 students that included Ian Bailey, Donald Mitchell and Anthony Adams, all of whom pursued academic careers and were appointed professor, Adams and Bailey in the School of Optometry at the University of California Berkeley, where Adams served as Dean, and Mitchell in the Department of Psychology at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, where he served a term as Head of Department. The class that included Bailey, Adams and Mitchell was the second class to qualify for the BAppSc in optometry of the University of Melbourne. Bailey travelled overseas studying in London where obtained the honours diiploma of the Fellowship of the Brtish Optical Association, and at Indiana University where he obtained a master's degree. He returned to Melbourne as lecturer and clinic administrator in the Victorian College of Optometry in 1971. He took the lead in establishing the low vision clinic at Kooyong in 1972 and subsequently established himself as a world leader in the field of low vision. In 1974 he resigned his lecturership in the VCO to become the first research fellow in the then newly established National Vision Research Institute, where he researched the management of low vision, in the course of which he devised the LogMAR system for visual acuity. He subsequently took a position in the School of Optometry at the University of California Berkeley wher he became professor of optometry. His biography is published in Clin Exp Optom 2004; 87: 37-41 and is also on this web site under the tab 'People who made history'.