Juris Upatnieks, a Latvian–American physicist and inventor, died on May 17, 2026, at age 90.
Born in Riga, Latvia, on May 7, 1936, he was a pioneer in holography and is known as a co-inventor of the field. After fleeing Latvia with his parents at the close of World War II and spending time in Germany, he emigrated to the United States in 1951.
He studied electrical engineering at the University of Akron and later at the University of Michigan. In 1964, he demonstrated with Emmett Leith the first three-dimensional holograms in the United States and published technical papers with Leith from 1962 to 1964. He was nominated for the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics alongside Leith but did not win.
Juris Upatnieks, 90, Latvian-American physicist and inventor.