This past week marked the anniversary of the passing of Dr. John Nash Ott (1901 – 2000). Dr. Ott was a true pioneer in the discovery of how full spectrum light can benefit the health of plants, animals and humans. Let’s reflect on Dr. Ott’s amazing career.

Time Lapse Photography

John Ott started his career as a banker in Chicago. In his spare time, he dabbled in time-lapse photography, specifically photographing plants as they germinated from seed to full-growth. He would take photographs of plants opening and fruit ripening. No doubt if you ever taken biology in high school, you would know exactly what I mean. Photobiology was a relatively new field at the time, but Dr. Ott quickly mastered the practice of turning time-lapse photos into film. His early works were published on Chicago television and caught the eye of Walt Disney.

In the 1950’s, Disney commissioned him to do several documentaries with time-lapse photography. Classic documentaries, such as Secrets of Life (1956), pioneered the use of time-lapse photography in nature films, a practice still in use today.

Full Spectrum Light and Plants

Dr. Ott found that by varying the amount of water and the color temperature of the lighting, he could manipulate flowering and fruit bearing. Dr. Ott even found a way to change the gender of plants by manipulating the color spectrum from lighting. His greenhouse experiments on the possible connection between full spectrum light and plant growth patterns were so impressive that Loyola University awarded him with a honorary doctorate in science.

Eventually, Dr. Ott left the banking industry and founded the Environmental Health and Light Research Institute to continue his studies into the ways in which light can, in the correct spectral balance, enhance the health of plants, animals, and humans. He also found that the absence of properly balanced light could lead to health disorders in people. He discovered th