Edward F. MacNichol Jr. Was Noted Biophysicist

Dr. Edward Ford MacNichol Jr. died peacefully on Sunday, March 14, at Emerson Hospital in Concord, in the company of family and friends.

Dr. MacNichol's scientific career integrated technology, engineering, medicine and teaching. After studying physics at Princeton University, he worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's radiation laboratory developing radar air tracking equipment during World War II. His subsequent long and illustrious career in biophysics began under the auspices of Dr. H.S. Hartline; he gathered data and designed instruments for his mentor's model of a primitive vision system, for which Dr. Hartline received a Nobel prize.

Dr. MacNichol was awarded his Ph.D. in biophysics in 1952 from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., where he subsequently taught for 13 years. From 1968 to 1972, he directed the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke and was acting director of the National Eye Institute, both parts of the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C. From 1973 on, he operated a year-round Laboratory of Sensory Physiology at the Marine Biological Institute at Woods Hole, and in 1986 he became a professor of physiology at Boston University, a post from which he retired at the age of 86.

Dr. MacNichol is survived by his wife, Dorothy Thorne MacNichol of Concord; his son, Edward MacNichol 3rd of Maryland and daughter, Anne MacNichol Brownell of Oak Bluffs, children of his previous marriage to Anne Ayer MacNichol of Wenham, and their children: Edward MacNichol 4th, Laura Snyder and Amber MacNichol of Maryland; Ian Brownell of Medford and Deirdre Brownell of Burbank, Calif.; and Dorothy's children, Elizabeth and Telly Theodoropoulous and Cam, Scott, David and Duncan Thorne and their families.

A memorial service will be held in late April.