now known as Fried’s parameter. In addition, his 1966 paper, "Limiting Resolution Looking Down Through the Atmosphere," was important in showing a basic limit, about five centimeters, to how sharply space-based telescopes can image objects on the ground. In 1981, Fried carried out the first analysis evaluating and establishing the feasibility of the use of atmospheric laser back scatter to control adaptive optics—a concept which now goes by the name of laser guide-star. He then designed, managed the development of the hardware for, and supervised an experiment that successfully demonstrated the validity of the laser guide-star concept. From 1970 (when he founded the company) until 1993 (when he sold the company), Fried was the president of the Optical Sciences Company (Placentia, California). In 1993, he received the SPIE Technology Achievement Award for his initial laser guide-star work. From 1993 to 1995 he was a professor of physics at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. Later, he worked as an independent consultant. In addition to his work related to optical propagation/turbulence effects/adaptive optics, Fried has done work in a variety of other electro-optics related fields such as the suppression of infrared background clutter in moving target detection systems; analysis of laser speckle statistics; analysis of the effect of photo-detection-event driven shot noise upon the precision of various types of optical measurements; the design and development of low-temperature-optics long-wavelength infrared sensors for use in mid course ballistic missile defense; and in the design and performance analysis for space-based infrared sensors for missile and aircraft detection. He has also been involved in the search for a sound approach to the mid-course decoy discrimination problem for ballistic missile defense. Fried died at the age of 89 in Monterey, California. Honors 1993 – David L. Fried, Optical Sciences Company, SPIE Technology Achievement Award. Research works D. Fried and T. Clark, "Extruding Kolmogorov-type phase screen ribbons," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 25, 463–468 (2008). J. Barchers and D. Fried, "Optimal control of laser beams for propagation through a turbulent medium," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 19, 1779–1793 (2002). J. Barchers, D. Fried, and D. Link, "Evaluation of the Performance of Hartmann Sensors in Strong Scintillation," Appl. Opt. 41, 1012–1021 (2002). D. Fried, "Branch point problem in adaptive optics," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 15, 2759–2768 (1998). H. Yura and D. Fried, "Variance of the Strehl ratio of an adaptive optics system," J. Opt. Soc. Am. A