PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
September 2020
535
Dr. Charles E. Olson Jr. was a pioneering
member of ASPRS from 1956 until he
passed away on June 28, 2020. Chuck
dedicated his life’s work to the interpre-
tation of aerial photographs, and his love
of education shined through in all of his
endeavors, from being a U.S. Navy air
photo instructor, working with Elderwise
and with youth via Michigan Envirothon,
and as a tutor through the Ann Arbor
Rotary Service.
Professionally, Chuck’s love of forestry
and air photo interpretation started early
at the School of Forestry at the Univer-
sity of Michigan, where he received his
Bachelor of Science in Forestry degree in
1952, followed with a Master’s of Forestry in Forest Man-
agement degree in 1953 from the University of Minnesota.
It was in that same year that Chuck began working as an
instructor of air photo interpretation and photogrammetry
for the U.S. Navy, retiring at the rank of Captain from the
Naval Reserves in 1987. The Commanding Officer of the At-
lantic Intelligence Center once introduced Dr. Olson as “The
best photo interpreter in the U.S. Navy.” During active duty,
his expertise in oblique photo metrics and radar image inter-
pretation was regularly requested for complex assignments.
For over 30 years in the Naval Reserves, he taught recruits
the science and the art of image interpretation. He received a
Ph.D. in Forestry from the University of Michigan in 1969.
Although offered full-time positions in remote sensing by the
Navy and the CIA, Dr. Olson decided to further his education
and pursue an academic career in natural resources man-
agement. In 1956, he began working with the University of
Illinois Forestry Department, teaching photo-interpretation
and pursuing a second Master’s of Forestry in Photo-Inter-
pretation and Photogrammetry. It would be a combination of
his education and his service that would result in one of his
most famous works, the seminal
Photogrammetric Engineer-
ing
publication entitled, “Elements of Image Interpretation”
(Olson 1960). This paper brought together disparate refer-
ences of image understanding into a holistic framework that
continues to serve as a fundamental component of remote
sensing education today. Indeed, the Elements of Image
Interpretation (i.e., tone, shape, size, pattern, association,
shadow, texture, and resolution) still form the basis of many
GIS and image processing algorithms from feature extraction
to object-based image analysis and ma-
chine/deep learning.
In 1962, Dr. Olson presented his concept
of the sources and characteristics of en-
ergy signals recorded in remotely sensed
images as the Energy Flow Profile (EFP)
to the Second Remote Sensing of Environ-
ment Symposium held at the Institute of
Science and Technology at the University
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Building on Dr.
Steven Spurr’s invention of the parallax
wedge in 1945, Dr. Olson also developed
the Michigan Parallax Wedge. This
all-purpose tool provided the necessary
measurement graticules to perform
complex photogrammetric operations and
was used by generations of aerial photograph practitioners.
These early achievements in photo interpretation and remote
sensing were standard approaches in practice and education
for decades, and they remain influential in the geospatial
field to this day.
From 1963 to 1969, Olson held a joint appointment at the
University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and the
Infrared Physics Lab of Willow Run Laboratories, the prede-
cessor to the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan
(ERIM). After completing his Ph.D., he spent most of his
career working at the University of Michigan where he even-
tually became Dean of the School of Natural Resources. In
his 35 years at Michigan, Chuck had one of the highest rates
of successful mentoring in the School’s history, graduating
over sixty M.S. and Ph.D. students and influencing countless
undergraduate and graduate students. They took his courses
in Map and Image Interpretation, Remote Sensing of Envi-
ronment, and Digital Image Processing.
Chuck was an active member of ASPRS locally in Michigan
through the Eastern Great Lakes Region, nationally and in-
ternationally teaching air photo interpretation and inspiring
numerous students to careers in remote sensing. He was a
Remote Sensing Instructor at the Remote Sensing Center for
East Africa, Nairobi, Kenya in 1981. Even after retiring as
Emeritus Professor from the University of Michigan in 1999,
Chuck was a notable voice among his colleagues and friends
at these meetings, often bringing his wife, Connie, along to
scout out the nearest Carnegie Libraries.
In Memoriam
Charles E. Chuck Olson
1931-2020
