Introduction of George B. Benedek 1997 recipient of the Proctor Medal.

J.t is an honor to introduce the 1997 Proctor Award Lecture, to be given by George B. Benedek, Professor of Physics and Biological Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. George was born and raised in New York City and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Physics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. George earned his PhD in physics at Harvard University where he held faculty appointments in Physics until he moved to MIT in 1961. He is now the Alfred Caspary Professor of Physics and Biological Physics at MIT George Benedek is best known for his contributions in physics and biological physics, which have earned him numerous prestigious awards. George has published more than 150 scientific papers and several textbooks. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1981. Rather than using the entire time allotted for this introduction by listing all his scientific honors and accomplishments, I want to emphasize that George Benedek is, first and primarily, an academic professor. This audience will probably appreciate that point by the end of this lecture. His educational skills as a professor extend far beyond the classrooms at MIT and emphasize both medical and physical research. It was this interest in physical and medical research that brought George to a meeting with Jin Kinoshita at the Howe Laboratories in Boston almost 30 years ago. They discussed the transparency of the eye. George learned about the biology of the lens from Jin, and George educated Jin about the physics of transparency. This exchange resulted in the 1971 paper and the 1973 book, coauthored with David Miller, on the theory of transparency of the eye. These were only two of many major contributions by George Benedek to vision research and a few of the most prominent should be mentioned. George developed quasielastic laser spectroscopy for measurements of the mobility of molecules in the transparent media of the eye: cornea, aqueous, lens and vitreous.' These instruments are developed commercially and used in clinical laboratories throughout the world. George predicted correctly that the light scattering and opacity in agingcataracts were the result of the aggregation of the lens proteins. Next, George predicted that the interactions between lens proteins could be modeled on the basis of a phase transition in protein solutions.' He was correct again. George predicted that anticataract agents could be based on the phase behavior of lens proteins. This prediction resulted in the development of nonsurgical chemical therapies that inhibit protein aggregation and cataract formation in animals. Today, I imagine George will seek to continue this series of correct predictions. I want to return to the greatest accomplishments of George Benedek—those as a professor whose students learn to pursue their creative dreams, to value achievement by the problems we pursue, not the number of papers we publish, and to know that the key to any problem in science is in the definition: the definition of the problem must be simple. Of course, to George a simple definition means the problem can be defined by an equation. So the cataract problem was solved in the early 1970s when he wrote the equation that defined the transparent structure of the lens. This should not be interpreted to mean that his professorial career is over. Everyone will understand that George Benedek is not participating in the Proctor ceremony simply to receive a prestigious award. For George, this convention hall is simply a very large classroom and anodier opportunity to exercise his role as an educator. Today we can expect to learn about his most recent ideas for imaginative solutions to important problems in ophthalmology and medicine. It is a great honor to introduce Professor George B. Benedek, who will describe "Cataract as a Condensation Disease." John I. Clark