The International Colour Vision Society awarded the 2005 Verriest
Medal to John D. Mollon, Professor of Visual Neuroscience at the
University of Cambridge, UK. This award is bestowed by the Society to
honor long-term contributions to the field of color vision. If the field
of color vision were itself a rainbow, then Professor Mollon's
contributions cover nearly its full spectrum, including the isolation and
elucidation of basic chromatic coding mechanisms and the constraints that
they impose on human (and more generally primate) visual performance, the
genetic basis of spectral coding mechanisms, the ecological influences on
and evolutionary origins of chromatic discrimination. He has been
instrumental in the design of several new color vision tests and has
extensively exploited abnormal models, both congenital and acquired, to
further our understanding of normal mechanisms. He is especially
appreciated for his keen and profound sense of the history of science, in
particular with respect to the field of color vision. He has been a member
of the society for over 25 years and is currently serving on its board of
directors. He organized the 2001 ICVS meeting in Cambridge, celebrating
the bicentennial of Thomas Young's lecture on color vision.
Communal breeding promotes a matrilineal social system where husband and wife live apart
