GLOBAL VISION 2020 BLOG →

Professor Josh Silver

Joshua Silver is an atomic physicist and Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. He became interested in the emerging area of adaptive optics in the mid-1980s. After considering the way our eye-brain adaptive optical system works, Silver suggested that self-refraction with suitable adaptive lens eyeglasses could be a useful procedure for correcting refractive error, after trying such a procedure on himself. He created several adaptive lens eyeglasses (adaptive eyewear), and then carried out research supported by the UK's DFID which showed self-refraction with adaptive eyewear to be a useful procedure for bringing vision correction to around half the world's population which currently needs, but does not have, corrective eyewear. The self-refraction procedure is particularly useful for populations where there are too few eyecare professionals to meet the needs of the people. Silver now directs the Centre for Vision in the Developing World, and hopes to see a billion people having vision correction by the year 2020.