Adelbert Ames Jr. (August 19, 1880 – July 3, 1955)[1] was an American scientist who made contributions to physics, physiology, ophthalmology, psychology, and philosophy.

His son, Adelbert Ames III (1921–2018), was the Charles Anthony Pappas Professor of Neuroscience, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

[citation needed] Ames attended Philips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, then went to Harvard College, where he earned a law degree, and where his most influential teachers were George Santayana and William James (whose daughter he was also engaged to, but did not marry).

For several years, while collaborating with his sister, Blanche Ames (who was also a painter), the two of them tried to determine if the quality of visual art could be improved by the scientific study of vision.

When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he served briefly as a captain in the aviation service, then as the overseer of a machine shop in which prototypes for instruments were developed.

While in the army he continued his studies of optics, in part because one of the soldiers in that shop (with whom he became a friend and collaborator) was Charles Proctor, professor of physics at Dartmouth College.

In 1921, this work led to Ames' first published scientific paper, the award of an honorary Master of Arts degree, and his election as professor of research in a new department of Physiological Optics.

[5] In 1935 the Department of Physiological Optics became the Dartmouth Eye Institute under the overall directorship of Alfred Bielschowsky, with Ames serving as its director of research.

The institute at various times employed between thirty and forty staff, including researchers, and clinicians who examined patients' eyes and made eyeglasses.

In 1960 his collaborator Hadley Cantril published an edited selection from these notes, with a Preface, and included Ames' correspondence with John Dewey.