Evening lecture by Drs. H.W. Bruins Slot, organized by the 'Chemische Kring Zwolle'.

Chemistry of Vision

Summary
Vision is the most important sensory system for us humans. To see, we need something to see, light, an image-forming eye, the conversion of light energy into chemical/electrical energy, signal transport, signal processing, image recognition, and therefore brain capacity for all of these things.

The introduction focuses primarily on human vision, zooming in on the chemistry of the retina, the place where photon energy is converted into signals, and specifically on the chemistry involved. Brief excursions into evolution, vision in other animals, worldwide research on vision, and the developing technology for seeing without eyes are also included.

The learning objective is to gain the understanding that vision is a magical process, one that we greatly enjoy, and one that we have been practicing effortlessly for years, after unconsciously spending years learning it. And that hundreds of human years of research are still needed before we more or less fully understand human vision. There are two historical interludes in the introduction.

Biography
After graduating from HBS-B, Jaap Bruins Slot (born 1948) had to choose chemistry at Utrecht University. After completing a bachelor's degree in the S2 track (chemistry with biology, physics, and mathematics), he went on to pursue his doctoral minor at Eindhoven University of Technology, where he completed a minor in organizational psychology within business administration under Professor Daniels. He then majored in Analytical Chemistry, graduating in 1972 with a thesis on the early pattern recognition of gas chromatography-coupled mass spectrometry of monosaccharides, which led to a publication in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) (formally under Professor Geo Dijkstra, but actually under Hans de Ridder and Jan Vink; the latter may be familiar to you from his account in the CKZ publication of early 2025). In 1973, he was able to choose to study medicine, also in Utrecht, where he was sworn in as a physician in 1980. He then specialized in occupational medicine (KUN), followed by specialist registration in 1984.

Paid work included chemistry lecturer at the MMS in Rotterdam, research associate (WM) at the Analytical Chemistry Lab in the group of Prof. Auke Dijkstra, currently chemometrics, at Utrecht University (UU), and the same at the WPO Chemistry there. He then worked as a research associate at Social Pharmacy (also at UU). After obtaining his medical degree, he worked from 1980 onwards as an occupational physician at the DGGD Zwolle (including municipalities, police, water boards, and education), as director-occupational physician at the BGD Zwolle (including Wehkamp, ​​Tijl, Bouw, and Artez), and as chief director-occupational physician (CMO) at Arbo Unie, where he primarily focused on quality assurance, promoting interdisciplinary work, lobbying, politics, and legislation. Retired since 2009, member of historical, medical, and chemical clubs, including CKZ. Currently, my work focuses primarily on domestic, agricultural, and hobby (history, science) matters.

Invitees are very welcome.

For further information about the lectures, please contact the CKZ by email: ckzsecretariaat@gmail.com.