Richard Held

Richard Marx Held
Born	October 22, 1922 New York, NY
Died	November 22, 2016 Northampton, MA
Nationality	American
Education	Harvard University, Swarthmore College, Columbia University, Stuyvesant High School
Occupation	Professor
Employer	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known for	Vision research, Gestalt Psychology

Richard Marx Held (October 10, 1922 – November 22, 2016) was an American professor emeritus of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work in vision development contributed to the early years of vision research. Held held a Civil Engineering degree from Columbia University, and earned a PhD in Experimental psychology with a specialization in space perception from Harvard University. In 1973, Held was named to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his achievements in psychology. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

After graduating from Columbia University and spending two years in the U.S. Navy as a Radar Officer, Held was invited to join Wolfgang Köhler at Swarthmore College. Robert Wurtz later described their research as a precursor to Hubel and Wiesel's discovery of responses of single cell cortical neurons to light stimulae on the retina.

While at Harvard, he designed his own lab equipment to study how people learn and relearn their spatial perceptions and coordination. Held researched how a person learns to locate sound by displacing their ears with padded earphones attached to two microphones. Sounds were played in the anechoic lab around them. After hours of exposure, subjects could accurately locate the source of the sound.

Working as an associate professor at Brandeis University, Held did a vision study involving the development of sight using kittens in the early 1960s. The kittens were exposed to light only under regulated test conditions to allow Held to examine the correlation between movement and sight in vision development.

In his 1976 Massachusetts Institute of Technology research funded by National Institutes of Health, National Aeronautic and Space Administration, and the Spencer Foundation, Held worked with the idea that babies would rather focus on a pattern they can see than a "fuzzy pattern." In 1978, Held found that impediments to vision in babies, such as drooping eyelids, should be treated immediately to prevent vision impairment.

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