Founding Dean—Ralph Smith Minor

Beginnings

Ralph Smith Minor (April 29, 1876–September 5, 1961) traced his ancestry to Captain John Thomas Minor (1635–1719), baptized in Charleston, Massachusetts, and the eldest son of Lieutenant Thomas Minor (1608–1690) and Grace Palmer (died 1690). Six generations of descendants followed, with one branch of the genealogical tree leading to James Smith Minor (1840–1914), husband of Mary Elizabeth Burrows (1842–1905). They married in 1864, and Ralph was the seventh of their nine children.

Born in the small community of Deposit, New York, Minor graduated from the local high school in 1893. He received his AB (1898, Root Fellow in Science) and AM (1901) degrees from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. In July 1902, he was awarded a PhD in physics from the University of Göttingen, Germany. Minor completed his research under the direction of the celebrated physicist Woldemar Voigt (1850–1919). His dissertation, "Dispersion einiger Metalle, besonders für ultraviolette Strahlung" (Dispersion of Some Metals, Especially for Ultraviolet Radiation), was published in Drude's Annalen der Physik in 1903.

After his first teaching appointment as a high-school science teacher from 1902 to 1903 in Little Falls, New York, Minor came to UC Berkeley in 1903 as an instructor in physics. In 1906 he accepted an appointment as associate professor of physics at the University of Nevada at Reno, where he organized the physics department. After three years and rising to the rank of professor at Nevada, he returned to UC Berkeley in 1909 as associate professor of physics, in charge of the lower division. He remained at Berkeley until his retirement in 1946.

Minor's first encounters with organized optometry

Ralph Minor was among the earliest academics to lecture before Bay Area optometrists. His first lecture for which a record is available took place on January 10, 1911, titled "Five Fundamental Phenomena of Light: Refraction, Reflection, Defraction, Interference, and Polarization."

The following year, Minor returned to lecture before the Alameda County Society of Optometrists on December 10, 1912, when members of the San Francisco Optical Society were also invited to attend. The topic was the Radiometer.

Minor was active on the lecture circuit in 1915. On January 19, he gave a 15-session course through the University Extension system, covering topics such as reflection and refraction, combinations of lenses, dispersion through optical glass, the eye as an optical system, color and color vision, and absorption in colored glasses. (Minor gave these and related lectures again in late 1915 and early 1916.) When the Panama International Exposition was held in San Francisco in 1915, he spoke before the American Optical Association's World's Optometry Congress. On the morning of July 23, 1915, he presented the topic "Light and Lenses." Minor's willingness to deliver these lectures demonstrated his appreciation for a central aim of organized optometry—to improve the expertise of its practitioners through advanced education.

In early 1919, Minor presented the first-ever applied-optics course at Berkeley (again through the UC Extension system) designed specifically for optometrists, titled "Optics as Applied in Optometry." The preparatory outline for the course has survived in the Berkeley Optometry Archives.

Minor's role in establishing the optometry curriculum

Ralph Minor was directly involved in the planning and establishment of the optometry curriculum at Berkeley. He advised George Schneider on how to work through the University's complex rules and certification process, and identified possible ways to organize the curriculum within the University system. On May 12, 1919, he sent Schneider a detailed report (cosigned by fellow physics professor Elmer E. Hall) on course organization, costs (for equipment and for faculty and instructor salaries), and requirements for admission. Minor suggested the curriculum "might be established as a separate school or it might be affiliated with some existing institution" (both possibilities were indeed realized, but in reverse order).³

Minor also assisted Schneider in determining the needs for office and clinic space. In this regard, Minor was ultimately a part of the final planning group for space allocations once the curriculum had been approved and a building secured for the Department of Physics, which would direct the optometry curriculum). Minor recalled that "when the plans for Le Conte Hall [Dept. of Physics] were being worked out Professor Lewis, Professor Raymond, Professor Hall and myself each worked on a particular unit of the building and spent the greater part of a year on the details of research rooms, laboratories, lecture rooms, et cetera...."⁴

Ralph Minor as head of optometry

In 1923 the University appointed Ralph Minor "Professor of Physics in charge of Optometry." Minor's challenge was to transform what amounted to an experiment in professional instruction into an independent school of optometry. The program had to provide the best in didactic and clinical training, and his students had to graduate, pass the state board examinations, and find gainful employment. Anything less would be seen as a failure of the curriculum to prepare its graduates for a professional life. Minor believed (correctly) that gaining the endorsement of University administrators and faculty for an independent school would require long years of effort.

Minor also faced pressures from organized optometry, which provided the curriculum's financial lifeline. In the early years and throughout his tenure, the sole support of the program came from a legislatively redirected $8 portion of each California optometry annual license renewal fee. If organized optometry lost faith in the University's optometry program, it might lobby the state to rescind the fee allocation and thereby force the University's hand—to either support the program on its own or shut it down.

Minor took the steps necessary to guarantee the long-term survival of the professional curriculum. For 23 years, he directed and expanded the program, working toward independence from the Department of Physics while improving the range and depth of a curriculum suitable for clinical training. He accomplished this despite a rather unsteady start. At first, student enrollment faltered—a cause for great concern in an unproven curriculum. Nevertheless, the number of registered students increased steadily after a few years, rising from 13 students in 1929 to 64 in 1933. The numbers fell precipitously when the Second World War decimated enrollments, but post-war recovery was relatively quick.

From the beginning, Minor fought tirelessly for the advancement of the professional program, sometimes at the expense of collegial relations with his colleagues in Physics. He angered some physics faculty by reshaping the curriculum, especially when he eliminated upper-division physics courses in favor of more didactic and clinical training in the physiological and pathological aspects of vision. In the long run such leadership proved to be of significant benefit to the optometry program.

Minor also displayed a talent for recruiting excellent faculty, such as Frederick Mason (1886–1954), the first full-time instructor in 1924. (George Schneider continued his private practice in downtown Berkeley and thus lectured part-time.) Minor also established Berkeley Optometry's first instructional alliance with medicine when he appointed Milton Shutes, MD, as a lecturer in ocular pathology.

The research component, too, needed expansion and guidance in order to produce vision science investigations that University faculty and administrators, optometrists, and the public could appreciate and support. Thus physiological optics became a primary focus. As he was nearing retirement, Minor relied increasingly on Kenneth Stoddard (PhD Stanford University, OD Berkeley Optometry '36), who in June 1938 left private clinical practice to join the optometry faculty. Minor admired the energetic direction provided by Stoddard, who succeeded Minor as dean in 1946, due in no small measure to Minor's personal recommendation to UC President Robert Gordon Sproul. This was also the inaugural year for the Graduate Program in Physiological Optics (now called Vision Science), whose establishment Minor and Stoddard had for years proposed to the University.

Retirement years

After twenty-three years as the leader of Berkeley Optometry, and 40 years overall as a University professor, Ralph Minor retired on June 30, 1946. UC President Robert Sproul wrote to Minor on July 3, 1946, praising him for his achievements, among them "developing the field of optometry from a casual specialty in the Department of Physics to a full-fledged professional school. In doing this, you have won and held the cooperation of professional workers in the field and, with their help, have successfully accumulated a fund for the construction of a home for the School. I congratulate you on a job well done."⁵ The last comment referred to a fundraising campaign for the construction of a separate Optometry building (see History—Part 2).

After stepping down as dean of Berkeley Optometry, Ralph Minor had more time to pursue his avocations. As he had done since 1934, he continued to typeset and print annual alumni directories from his private printing press (which he called the "Oquaga Press") until the final issue of 1954. He also produced greeting cards, art pamphlets for his wife, recipes, and a variety of other ephemera from his smaller Chandler press. Some of these items were created for charitable causes.

On November 23, 1952, the Optometry Alumni Association sponsored a dedication ceremony for Dean Emeritus Ralph Minor. The event was capped by the unveiling of a portrait of Ralph Minor, painted by Hans Meyer-Kassel. The painting was a gift from Berkeley Optometry alumni to the Optometry Library. Other post-retirement accolades followed, among them an honorary doctorate from Minor's alma mater, Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, during its 143rd commencement on June 14, 1953. Minor was honored for his role in establishing the Department of Physics at the University of Nevada, in creating a "distinctive laboratory program in that field at the University of California, and, finally, building on a special knowledge of optics" to develop "first a course, later a department, and ultimately a School of Optometry that lent stature to the profession and brought wide recognition to the University he served."⁶

Ralph Minor died of heart failure at the age of 85 on Tuesday, September 5, 1961 in his study at 2514 Cedar St. in Berkeley. Edward W. Strong (1901–90), philosophy professor and UC Berkeley chancellor, wrote to Ralph Minor, Jr., on September 11, 1961:

... The School of Optometry stands as a monument to Dr. Minor's energetic drive and determination that this science, into which he came through his studies as a physicist, should be accorded recognition as a separate entity in the larger field of medicine. As its first dean, and long after his retirement, in 1946 after 40 years of service to the University, he kept actively interested in it. I understand the several directories of the School's alumni, which he printed on his private press, are treasured by all who were fortunate enough to be associated with him....⁷

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