Bruce Evans receives award

Optometrist Professor Bruce Evans has been named as the recipient of the 2017 Owen Aves medal from the Yorkshire Optical Society.

Professor Evans was presented with the accolade by the society’s chair, Stewart Mitchell, after he gave the 2017 Owen Aves Memorial Lecture on Orthoptics for the busy optometrist.

The memorial lecture and its accompanying medal is given annually to speakers from a range of backgrounds and is designed to recognise their contributions to the profession. The lecture was established in 1929 following the death of practitioner Owen Aves, who had been due to give a lecture to the society before he died.

Commenting on the recipient of the award this year, John Goacher, secretary of the Yorkshire Optical Society, told OT: “Professor Evans has, over a long period of time, made significant contributions to optometric education (via the Institute of Optometry), contributed to the understanding of visual stress, dyslexia and colourimetry and taken over the editing of a major text on orthoptics. He is therefore a most suitable recipient of the Owen Aves Memorial Medal.”

Reflecting on the lecture, Mr Goacher shared that it was “well received” by members of the society and “provoked consideration of how we could be more proactive with binocular vision problems in optometric practice.”

Previous recipients of the medal have included Andrew Tompkin, Frank Norville and Professor David Elliott.