. . . that
Boston XO contact lenses have an ISO/Fatt Dk of 100? Pretty impressive huh?
What does that mean? It has to do with how much oxygen flows through the
contact lens to the cornea. The bigger the Fatt number, the better your eyes can breathe.
You're not going to believe this, but unless I'm the victim of an Internet hoax, the ISO/Fatt measurement was named in part for Professor Irving Fatt. Look:
Berkeley -- Irving Fatt, a University of California at Berkeley chemist who contributed to many fields, including basic work on contact lenses, died Oct. 5 [1996] of cancer at his home in Berkeley.
A professor emeritus of engineering science in the College of Engineering and of physiological optics in the School of Optometry, he was 76.
Fatt's life-long interest was the flow of fluids through small pores, a specialty he applied to the flow of petroleum through porous rock, the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide through the cornea, and the flow of tears around contact lenses.
"He took the ideas he had developed about transport through porous media and applied them to understanding the physiology of the eye," said Clayton J. Radke, UC Berkeley professor of chemical engineering. "He was also a tinkerer, and until last year was still working in a lab he set up in his basement at home."
Fatt is perhaps best known for the work he did in the 1970s on contact lenses, when they first saw widespread use and problems began popping up. He developed an oxygen probe to measure oxygen flow to the cornea, and showed that for impermeable lenses made of polymethyl methacrylate, blinking was essential to bring oxygen-filled tears under the lens to nourish the cornea and allow normal functioning.
He also developed the concepts that led to today's soft and gas permeable contact lenses, which allow oxygen through to nourish the eye directly and allow longer wear. Until recently he operated the only independent laboratory equipped to evaluate new materials developed by industry for contact lenses.
"Irv's early basic science work on the physiology of the cornea provided the basis for many critical advances in the contact lens field, " said Anthony J. Adams, dean of the School of Optometry at UC Berkeley.
Professor Irving Fatt. He invented a way to make contact lenses more comfortable, and his colleagues called in "Irv."
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03-17-2011, 02:53 PM
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