Donald Gerson grew up in New York City, attended the Bronx H.S. of Science, and attended NYU where he received a BA in Meteorology. He was recruited by the Navy Hydrographic Office (later Oceanography Office), and was an Oceanographer for 22 years. His early research was on Arctic Sea Ice, involving many field trips. The first, in 1957, was to Point Barrow, Alaska, doing time-lapse photography of the shore ice through breakup and drift. Next was four months at Cape Dyer, NWT, for the same purpose, but under very different conditions. Many other field trips ensued: Thule Greenland, to try out a technique to delay freezing at the harbor, five months on Drifting Ice Station Charlie, and countless multi-day Arctic flights to survey ice conditions. It all resulted in a cumulative 2 years spent in the Arctic. He was the United States representative to the World Meteorological Organization’s Working Group on Sea Ice. He was subsequently elected a Fellow of the Explorers Club and of the Royal Geographical Society. He later did studies supporting sonar, particularly the development of a method for tracking the Gulf Stream by computer analysis of satellite imagery. He received the Goldsborough Award for the Best Technical Paper of the Year in 1983. Later he spent five years at the Defense Mapping Agency studying terrain analysis techniques utilizing overhead imagery. He then moved to the Office of Research and Development at the Central Intelligence Agency for 15 years, where he headed the Agency’s research on computer techniques for analyzing imagery for intelligence purposes. Jointly with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, he headed the largest ever research program on Computer Vision. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal. He is a member of Sigma Xi, IEEE, and ASMP, and of course the Explorers Club and the Royal Geographic Society. He continues involvement in imagery research by sponsoring an annual International Workshop on Computer Vision at the Cosmos Club (where he also is a member) in Washington, DC.

Since retirement he has turned his attention to photography at a professional level. While incorporating photography from his earlier extensive travel, he continues regular ventures into extraordinary places, carefully adding to his already large portfolio.