Adelbert Ames

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With contributions to physics, physiology, ophthalmology, psychology, and philosophy, Adelbert Ames Jr. is a scientist of great distinction. However, when his family background is looked at, it is not difficult to see how he came to achievement so much. He was born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1880. His father, whom he is named after, was a man of distinction. He was a general in the Union army during the Civil War and later became Governor and a Senator during the Reconstruction Era. He also gained several patents for pencil sharpeners and other mechanical objects. His mother, Blanche Butler Ames, was the daughter of a controversial military leader, politician, and unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. presidency. Ames’ sister was a women’s rights suffragist and his brother was an Army officer and politician. Even Ames’ son, Adelbert Ames III went on to be a professor at Harvard University.
Ames attended Phillips Academy at Andover, before going on to Harvard where he earned his law degrees. Around this time, he married Fanny Vose Hazen and had his son and daughter. After working as a lawyer for four years, he got tired of it and decided to become a painter. He worked alongside his sister who was also a painter. Together, they tried to find different ways to improve the visual quality of art. In their time together, the Ames siblings worked to develop a color-notation system. They mixed thousands of colors and came up with about 3,300 new colors of differing values, intensities, and hues. They wanted to make paintings like no one had ever seen. As a result, they turned to study vision on a scientific level. Ames believed that if he studied the human eye and learned everything he could about it, then he w...

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...on sitting on it diminishes as well. Suddenly, when a normal man comes to stand in front of the chair legs, your mind is tricked into seeing a normal person looking at tiny person or vice versa.
Despite not coming from a background or education in psychology, Adelbert Ames Jr. has truly changed how we can perceive the world. With his demonstrations that were ridiculed and shot down, we can see that how we perceive the world around us is not always how it really is. His room and chair trick our eyes into seeing unreal things simply because we have never had an experience with them before. For an artist and a lawyer, Ames made many great contributions through his work. Everyone could learn a lesson from him. Follow what you want to do and not what others think you should do. He certainly did follow his own path and changed many lives because of it.

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