Béla  Julesz

Béla Julesz was born in 1928 in Budapest, Hungary. He earned his diploma in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Budapest and completed his Ph.D. at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1956, focusing on network theory, microwave systems, and television signals. That same year, he emigrated to the United States with his wife Margit amid political unrest in Hungary. He joined Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, where he led the Sensory and Perceptual Processes Department from 1964 to 1982, and later the Visual Perception Research Department until 1989.

He was a pioneering visual neuroscientist and experimental psychologist, best known for creating random dot stereograms, computer-generated images that demonstrated stereoscopic depth perception without traditional visual cues such as perspective or identifiable objects. His groundbreaking work established that the brain computes depth information early in visual processing. He also advanced the study of texture discrimination through constraining second-order statistics and proposed the theory of “textons” as basic elements of texture perception. Over his career, Julesz authored and collaborated on more than 200 publications, including the influential Foundations of Cyclopean Perception (1971), considered a classic in psychophysics and cognitive science. He described his approach as “scientific bilingualism,” highlighting his ability to combine mathematical precision with psychological insight. His first report on random dot stereograms was initially rejected by the Journal of the Optical Society of America but later published in the Bell Labs Technical Journal (1960), marking a key moment in vision science. In 1965, Julesz co-organized one of the first exhibitions of computer-generated art with A. Michael Noll at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York.

Julesz’s work at Bell Labs contributed significantly to the rise of computer-generated art. His random dot stereograms functioned as both scientific experiments and compelling visual images that inspired artists and audiences by revealing new ways to perceive depth. This research helped shape the development of autostereograms and three-dimensional visual art. In 1965, he co-organized one of the earliest exhibitions of computer-generated art with A. Michael Noll at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York.

Computational and neurovisual research were significantly advanced through the contributions of Julesz in vision science. He received the MacArthur Fellowship in 1983 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1987. After retiring from Bell Labs in 1989, he joined Rutgers University, where he helped establish their Laboratory of Vision Research and continued investigating visual perception and stereopsis. His later writings, including Dialogues on Perception (1995), reflected his ongoing intellectual engagement with the field. Julesz passed away in 2003.