Polychromatic plates for color sense examination

Historical Significance: Rabkin was Docent and Director of the Ukrainian Professor Hirschman Memorial Central Ophthalmic Institute, He devised these colour vision test plates in 1936 with a second edition published in 1939. The test was well regarded and considered efficacious (see LEGRAND H. HARDY, GERTRUDE RAND, and M. CATHERINE RITTLER, "Tests for the Detection and Analysis of Color-Blindness. III. The Rabkin Test," J. Opt. Soc. Am. 1945; 35: 481-487). It was widely used in studies on colour vision in the 1940s and 50s but failed to overtake the Ishihara test as the preferred colour vision screening test and has ultimately sunk into obscurity. The original owner Joseph Ringland Anderson (1894-1961) was a prominent Melbourne ophthalmologist (FRCS Edinburgh 1919) who had worked with Sir John Parsons. He held appointment at the Alfred hospital and earned his MD in 1932. He wrote books on Detachment of the Retina (1931) and on Hydrophthalmia (1939) Ocular vertical deviations (1947) and Ocular Vertical Deviations and the Treatment of nystagmus (1959). The foundation chair in ophthalmology at the Universitry of Melbourne established in 1963 was named in his honour, the second appointment to which was a decendant, Hugh Ringland Taylor.