Robert Lang

Robert J. Lang has been an avid student of origami for nearly forty years and is now recognized as one of the world’s leading masters of the art, with over 500 designs cataloged and diagrammed. He is noted for designs of great detail and realism, and includes in his repertoire some of the most complex origami designs ever created. His work combines aspects of the Western school of mathematical origami design with the Eastern emphasis upon line and form to yield models that are at once distinctive, elegant, and challenging to fold. They have been shown in exhibitions in Hamburg, Salzburg, Boston, San Diego, and Tokyo, including the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Dr. Lang was the first Westerner invited to address the Nippon (Japan) Origami Association’s annual meeting (in 1992) and has been an invited guest at international origami conventions around the world. Dr. Lang is one of the pioneers of the cross-disciplinary marriage of origami with mathematics; he has been one of the few Western columnists for Origami Tanteidan Shinbun, the journal of the Japan Origami Academic Society, and has presented several refereed technical papers on origami mathematics at mathematical and computer science professional meetings. He has consulted on applications of origami to engineering problems including medical devices, air-bag design, and expandable space telescopes. He is the author or co-author of eight books and numerous articles on origami and is a regular lecturer on the connections between origami, mathematics, science, and technology. Prior to 2001, he was a full-time laser physicist with NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Spectra Diode Laboratories (now part of JDSU, Inc.), where he was Chief Scientist and Vice-President of Research and Development, and in the course of which he authored over 80 refereed technical papers and 46 patents. Although origami is now his primary focus, he continues to consult part-time in technical fields including statistical optics and laser applications, and he is the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.