Josh invited me to his lab at City College

 Josh invited me and Ute, my later wife, in December 1986 to visit his laboratory at City College in NY. At the time, we were working in Howard Howland's lab at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and since we were supposed to be in Josh's lab in the morning, we flew out of Ithaca very early (still deep night). We made it to his lab at about 8:00 a.m. But there was not really much happening and so we waited. The whole day was then a mix of some discussions with Josh and his lab people (I still have tons of notes in my old lab notebook), inter-rupted by waiting cycles were it was not clear what we should do. Towards the evening, everybody became hungry, but Josh could not make up his mind when and where to go. Somehow, it remained diffuse to us whether we would ever leave or not. Fortunately, David Troilo proposed to take a train to a restaurant a bit more far outside Manhattan. We were no sure why so far, but we found out that there was some interest in the lady behind the bar - which turned out to become David's later wife Susan. We had alcoholic beverages and managed to leave so late that we missed the train. It was freezingly cold outside and we liked the idea of returning to the bar so this was next. Later in the night we were kindly hosted by David. The mixture of the day of discussions about the work, waiting for what would happen if Josh finally wants to go for dinner, freezingly cold winds around the blocks, and the demanding drinks at the end, was something that we never forget.

Sigrid Diether showing Josh her OKN device in 1999

Eight weeks later, Josh came to Cornell. Invited by Howie, he gave a talk entitled "Does retinal activity control eye development and myopia?"  At that time, the topic seemed a wild idea and I was not sure. Howie, Adrian Glasser and me rather believed that, in fact, accommodation somehow fine-tunes axial eye growth, and we did some experiments in chickens wearing spectacle lenses which seemed to support our idea. But Josh did not trust our measurements, may be, and invited me to come to New York with our spectacle lens-treated chickens so that he could check them himself. I got a big box, filled with it about 15 chickens that had worn spectacles before, and went on a greyhound bus. In NY, I somehow I got lost in Harlem and had to walk a long way through the area, with the big box filled with chickens under my arm. I guess this had some protective effect since people were amused and nobody cornered me. In Josh's lab, the previously myopic chicks were suddenly no longer so myopic and I clearly remember the quality of feeling that I had when Josh did not trust my measurements. Fortunately, at least the hyperopic chicks that we measured showed some effect and I felt a bit rehabilitated.

This started a 25 year long always dynamic collaboration. Dynamic, because our ideas often were similar, and several times we did almost the same experiments (without knowing). However, this turned out extremely fruitful, because the experiments either confirmed each other or not, and if not, the reason was even more interesting. Despite some never-ending small competition, Josh was always helpful and provided the details about his experiments. However, he also helped me and our laboratory so many times in more fundamental ways, like as a referee for some German Award, by giving an invited talks at strategically important occasions (that did not return so much to him but much me), or to write recommendations for job applications, by introducing us to people who were just nice, and also later important for us, or by inviting members of our lab to his lab in New York. He also started several lines of our own research just based on a single comment in some discussion at a meeting. 

Josh with with Xiangtian Zhou and Sally McFadden
Wenzhou March 2006

A major driving force in Josh's science was fundamental curiosity, basic and not driven by any political and grant-related issues . Such curiosity was also there outside science, if I think about the various excursions. But his curiosity was particularly obvious when it came to food. I remember going out for a lunch with Josh in 2002 at the myopia conference in Guangzhou. We ended up in a market that was im the basement of some older building, not well illuminated and a lot of especially interesting looking kinds of food on display. Josh went through the place and tasted and tested almost everything that people reached him. I, not seeing much in the dim light and not as open-minded, came from this lunch tour rather hungry.

He also seemed to have never any stomach problems, unclear to me how such a stable system can fail at the end.  We will all miss him very much, and will have a problem to make ARVO be similar as before.

Frank Schaeffel

Tübingen