Courtesy of the color science association of Japan
Yoshinobu Nayatani was a Japanese color scientist who made significant contributions to the development of color appearance models and contributed diligently to the color research community. He was born in 1927 and passed away on May 29, 2009, in Hyogo prefecture in Japan [1].
He obtained a bachelor of electrical engineering from Osaka University in 1951. After graduation, he accepted a position at the Electro-Technical Laboratory of Japan (ETL) and in 1952 worked as technical officer in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). His activities included photometry, colorimetry, and fundamental theory of illumination engineering. Over this period, he continued his higher education and obtained a Ph.D. from Osaka University in 1961. From 1962 to 1963, Nayatani studied at the National Research Council of Canada as a post-doctoral fellow under the advisement of Gunter Wyszecki to examine visual colorimetry. In 1974, he became the Director of the Osaka Branch of ETL where he continued to work until his retirement in 1980 [2].
He joined the Faculty of Engineering at Osaka Electro-Communication University as a junior college professor in 1980 and in 1982 accepted the position of professor from the Faculty of Engineering of the same university. From 1995 to 1997, he served as the Dean of Faculty of Engineering, and in 1998, he became an Emeritus Professor and then served on the Board of Trustees from 1999 to 2002.
97.1 Color Appearance
Nayatani served on the Editorial Board of the journal Color Research and Application from 1977 until 2008. He served as President of the Color Science Association of Japan from 1984 to 1986. He was an active member of the CIE and served as Chairman of Division 1 technical committee TC 1.3 on Standard Sources for 8 years, and of TC 1.32 on Prediction of Corresponding Colors. He was an honorary member of the Japanese National Committee of CIE, the Color Science Association of Japan, Illuminating Engineering Institute of Japan (IEIJ), and Japanese Society for Quality Control. He was the chair of the organizing committee for the International Colour Association (AIC) quadrennial conference in Kyoto in 1997 and facilitated the development of the first CIE approved color appearance model that became known as CIECAM97s. He also served as the Chairman of the organizing committee of the International Color Science Association of Kyoto Games from 1995 to 1999.
He received several awards for his contributions to the field of color science. His most notable awards include the Illuminating Engineering Institute of Japan Prize (1966), the Deming Prize for individual contribution to quality management (1985), and in 1990 the Illuminating Engineering Institute of Japan award for the paper “Optical Density Functions of Lens and Macular Pigment Estimated from the Color Matching Functions.” His contributions to the field of color science were also recognized by the AIC in 1993 when he was selected as the recipient of the prestigious Deane B. Judd Award. In 1997, he received the Isao 4 award in Japan. He also received an award from The Color Science Society of Japan in 1998. A special testimonial for color technology was organized in his honor in 2003 by “Suga Foundation for Promoting Weathering Technology.”
His professional interests pertaining to color covered information processing at the interface between psychology and physics as well as color engineering (color appearance and metamerism). He published several papers on the relationship between color order systems, color appearance [3], and color difference.
Among his publications were some manuscripts concerned with the special role of gray and adding gray as a central color in the opponent color order system. In this approach, the two opponent axes would be changed from red–green to red–gray and gray–green and from yellow–blue to yellow–gray and gray–blue. He continued contributing to color science right up to his death. Although some studies seemed to support the special role of gray, this proposal has not been further investigated.