Professor Russell L. De Valois 1926–2003

On 20 September, 2003, Professor Russell L. De Valois died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident ten days earlier. For more than four decades, Russell De Valois had been a leading figure in the study of brain and behavior. With the passing of Russell De Valois, the vision science community lost a brilliant scientist, an inspirational colleague, and a dear friend. Russell De Valois was born in Iowa in 1926, but he spent most of his early life in India, where his parents supervised an agricultural missionary station. Russ attended Highclerc School in Kodaikanal, India. At the time of the accident Russ and his wife Karen were returning from Fort Collins, Colorado, where they had attended the 60th reunion of Russ’s high school class. Russ never lost his love for India; he often treated his colleagues to spicy curries accompanied by spicy stories of high school pranks in Kodaikanal. During two of their sabbaticals, Russ and Karen returned to Kodaikanal. It was on one of these that their influential book Spatial Vision was conceived and written. Russell De Valois continued his education at Oberlin College from which he received an A.B. in Psychology and an M.A. in Zoology. In 1952 he received a Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from the University of Michigan, then spent 1953–54 at Freiburg University (Germany) as a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellow. Russ’s first faculty appointment at the University of Michigan (1954–1959) was followed by a professorship in Psychology at Indiana University (1959–1968). From 1968 until the time of his death, he was Professor of Psychology, Vision Sciences, and Neurosciences at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1969, Russell De Valois and Karen Kennedy were married. This was the beginning of a 34-year personal partnership and intellectual collaboration, a joint ven-