Professor Chris Dainty is best known in the imaging science community as the co-author of Image Science; co-authored with Dr Rodney Shaw Hon FRPS, himself a previous recipient of the Progress Medal, that has become one of the most quoted texts in its field. This ground-breaking work, first published in 1974, is the standard text on the principles, analysis and evaluation of photographic-type imaging processes. Although now almost 50 years old, its fundamental approaches foretold the future of modern CMOS and CCD imaging sensors and provides, amongst many other fundamental topics, a means of modelling and analysis of these sensors that were yet to appear in consumer cameras, cell phones and virtually all modern imaging devices. The modelling of many physical image attributes, explained in this book, are widely cited and form the basis and inspiration for the evolution of all modern imaging sensors.
Professor Chris Dainty's interest in optical imaging started in the mid-1960s when studying Photographic Technology at Regent Street Polytechnic. His final year project “A Computer Study of Model Photodetectors” was the first of many collaborations with his teacher and mentor, Dr Rodney Shaw, leading to the publication Image Science.
In addition to research, Professor Dainty has been active in teaching optics and physics throughout his career, at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and he has supervised 65 PhD students in a diverse range of topics such as speckle interferometry, the phase problem, surface scattering, adaptive optics and visual perception.
From 1974-78, he was a Lecturer in Physics at Queen Elizabeth College of the University of London. Professor Dainty joined the Institute of Optics at the University of Rochester 1978 and the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy in July 1982. He became Pilkington Professor of Applied Optics at Imperial College in January 1984 and was SERC Senior Research Fellow for the period October 1987 to September 1992.
From 1994-2002 he was Editor of Optics Communications, handling over 5000 manuscripts and from 2019 to 2021 he was Senior Deputy Editor of Optics Express.
In October 2002, Professor Dainty moved to The University of Galway as Chair of Applied Physics and Science Foundation Ireland PI.
From 2012 to 2021 he worked with Xperi FotoNation Ltd (Galway) where he was Research Projects Coordinator.
During his career, Professor Dainty interacted and collaborated extensively with industry. He founded an Industrial Associates Scheme at Imperial College and at Galway established links to more than 50 companies in ICT, healthcare and other industries.
He is currently Emeritus Professorial Research Associate at UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, Professor Emeritus at The University of Galway and Distinguished Research Fellow at Imperial College London.
Now retired he continues to enjoy photography as a hobby, in the form medium format stereo on colour transparency film which produces the highest quality stereo-realism.
