Certificate of Fellowship of the American Academy of Optometry for Ian Laurence Bailey

Historical Significance: The American Academy of Optometry was founded in 1922. It promotes the highest standards of optometric practice and expects its Fellows to conform to its codes of ethics and good practise. Fellows are entitled to use the affix FAAO. It organises a highly regarded annual conference that presents both research papers and continuing professional education. It publishes the peer-reviewed scholarly journal Optometry and Vision Science. The Academy is highly regarded internationally and there are chapters of Fellows in several countries, namely Canada, Europe and South Africa. Quite a number of Australians attained Fellowship by examination There are (in May 2018) 90 Australians who are Fellows. Ian Bailey would have been one of the first Australians to become a Fellow.Ian Bailey graduated as an optometrist in 1961 from the Victorian College of Optometry. He travelled overseas studying in London 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 for the rest of his career, reaching the rank of full Professor. He was elected an honorary life member of the Australian College of Optometry in 2014. His biography is published in Clin Exp Optom 2004; 87: 37-41, which is also on this website under the tab 'People who made history'.