Through the lens of Professor Van Heel

Exhibition

Van Heel Collection

Educator at heart

What makes a celebrated teacher celebrated? Is it the drive for educational innovation? The love for the field? The lasting impression they leave on their students? For Prof. Dr. Abraham van Heel, it was all of the above.

As the founder of the field of optics in the Netherlands and a teacher at Delft University of Technology, he contributed to the personal development of many young scientists. They would fondly look back on his experiment-filled lectures for the rest of their lives. Because making a spectacle out of a lecture: that was something Van Heel could do like no other.

A glimpse into Professor Van Heel’s lessons, decades later.

Career in Delft

Bram van Heel began his career as a teacher in 1925 at the Technische Hoogeschool Delft (the predecessor of Delft University of Technology). Just before, he had obtained his doctorate from Leiden University. In Delft, he taught a variety of physics-related topics, but from the very beginning, he had a passion for his field: optics. Over the years, he increasingly gained ground for optical research and education. He authored numerous publications, including 'Inleiding in de Optica' (Introduction to Optics), which long remained a highly influential work in the training of young optics specialists. At the university, he was beloved among his students. Many decades after his death in 1966, former students still spoke highly of this extroverted professor, who brought optics to life with infectious enthusiasm.

From the Van Heel Collection

Experiment(ertainment)

The enormous popularity of Van Heel's lectures cannot be overstated. His classes, which he managed to make a spectacle of time and again, were attended by students from various disciplines. What made his teaching so captivating? Van Heel always managed to make the theory he taught tangible with live experiments. The students saw the tough subject matter come to life before their very eyes. To illustrate, for a lesson on the workings of the eye, he prepared cow eyes so that the students could see their classroom projected on the retinas. He also brought his famous alignment method into the lecture halls. Based on Young's interferometer, he developed an optical method that was used to rebuild the destroyed bridge over the Meuse River near Hedel after World War II. This allowed the students to test the technology themselves. A surviving photo illustrates one of Van Heel's other demonstrations. With his 180-degree lens, he took a picture of his packed classroom. This way, the students saw themselves in a fisheye perspective. All the experiments had been meticulously prepared in advance so that the ‘show’ could run smoothly. This is how Van Heel, as a pioneering object-based teacher, managed to amaze his students endlessly.

Schematic representation of Van Heel's alignment method

From learning to the labour market

Van Heel believed that educational programmes should ensure that students were well prepared for the labour market, and he developed his curriculum accordingly. For example, he felt it was important for his programme to focus on the application of technical skills. This can be illustrated by his encouragement of the collaboration between his group and the Utrecht University Observatory. There, his students had the opportunity to work on equipment that the astronomers could actually use. The fact that his students both designed and were involved in the construction of their designs, is characteristic of Van Heel's view on the importance of craftsmanship. His department even had its own glass-grinding workshop where students could practice. Van Heel's client-focused approach also fostered close ties between the programme and the industry, and many found employment there after graduation. For example, at N.V. Optische Industrie 'De Oude Delft'.

The Accessibility of Optics

Van Heel disapproved of academics’ obscure approach to optics at the time. Many texts and formulas that were central to the field, were geared to the intellectual elite. He, on the other hand, wanted to make the field of optics more accessible. For example, when he was appointed Professor in 1947, he noted: It would be desirable if authors in these fields crouched to the level of those eager for application and, at the very least, made their results somewhat accessible in the form of formulas (translated from Dutch, original citation below). He took matters into his own hands by translating the complex material into texts that were easier to understand. Theories of, for example, Smith were tackled in such a way that they were much more applicable. Together with his students, he made significant progress in making the field of optics accessible to a wide audience.

Quote

Het zou gewenscht zijn, dat de schrijvers op deze gebieden zich nederbogen tot het peil van de op toepassing belusten en hun uitkomsten desnoods in de vorm van recepten eenigszins toegankelijk maakten. - Van Heel, 1947

Always a Teacher

Professor Van Heel has gone down in history as the father of Dutch optics. In the hearts of his students, however, he lived on as a beloved teacher who had prepared them for illustrious careers, with his methods, experiments, and advice. Despite ample opportunities in the industry, Van Heel’s identity as a teacher was one that he never wanted to relinquish. See 7:05-8:32 for a clip from the 1964 student production 'Mejuffrouw, Mijne Heren,' in which Van Heel stars as himself (directed by Mart van den Busken).

Credits

This online exhibition was curated by the department of Academic Heritage, History, and Art at Delft University of Technology.

The exhibition could be created thanks to the work of the Tailor-Made Approach to Faculty Collections programme on the Van Heel Collection. It is also partly based on the exhibition Optics for All (2019-2020) at the Delft Science Centre, curated by the department of Academic Heritage, History, and Art in collaboration with the Imaging Physics department of the Faculty of Applied Sciences.