Irwin Scollar was born in 1928 in New York City. He completed his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering at the Lehigh University in 1948 and graduated from Columbia University in 1951, where he studied Classical Archaeology. In 1959 he received his PhD in Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh University, UK. He moved to Germany in 1959 to work at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn. He retired in 1991.
Continue readingAn Inspiration
Irwin Scollar died on 13th December 2021, aged 93. He was an Honorary Member of ISAP from the begining and will be missed by the community for his contributions and pioneering spirit.
Continue readingFrom the early days …
I had my first contact with Irwin in 1983 when I was at high school and wanted to build a bleeper. At that time there were not many magnetometers around and hence I wanted to build an acoustic proton-magnetometer (for those of you who don’t know what a bleeper is). I wrote him a letter and got a response about hundred times longer than what I had written. He explained all the details and gave a lot of tips in this first letter and all the others following.
Continue readingPolish things
Writing this ‘birthday memory’ for Irwin made me realise that I’ve known him for more than half my life – a life that is some 15 years shorter than his own. However… In 1974, the Council for British Archaeology held what it called a ‘symposium’ that was later published as Aerial reconnaissance for archaeology edited by David Wilson. In this, Irwin had a contribution about transformation of oblique aerial photographs that included a computer method that accurately converted a point from an image into its x, y and z coordin
Continue readingA delayed backfire of the Cold War
Writing this happy-birthday message made us think of some of our past contacts with Irwin and his software AirPhoto.
Continue readingA visit to Japan
The time when we were first in contact was in the early 1970s. One of the elder colleagues from the Nara National Research Institute of Cultural Properties sent several aerial photographs to him asking whether some image enhancement could be applied. Through Irwin’s processing the moat of a mounded tomb, which was under a paddy field, became clear.
Continue readingPioneer of Archaeological Prospection Irwin Scollar turns 90
Archaeological prospection is celebrating one of its very first pioneers: Irwin Scollar turns 90 in November 2018. Since the early 1960s, the US-born engineer and archaeologist has considerably influenced archaeological geophysics and aerial archaeology and his vast knowledge and ground-braking innovations have been an inspiration to a worldwide community in this discipline.
Continue readingSoftware for Seriation
I never met Irwin Scollar personally, but I corresponded with him several times years ago when I was using WinBASP, the Windows update to the earlier command line version of BASP (Bonn Archaeological Seriation Program). He was extremely helpful and conveyed a delightful personality, even via email.
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