Robert Spence (11 July 1933 – 20 September 2024) was a British engineer who was a professor emeritus and senior research investigator at the Imperial College London, known for his work in the field of information visualization.
In 1983, he obtained a DSc in engineering from the University of London, and in 1997 a higher doctorate from the Royal College of Art.
[4] Spence spent his academic career at the Department of Electrical Engineering of the Imperial College London, where he had started in 1958 as research assistant.
[3] Notable contributions in the field of engineering included the generalized form of Tellegen's theorem and algorithms for improving the manufacturing yield of mass-produced circuits.
In the field of human–computer interaction, Spence created the first focus+context technique called the Bifocal Display[5] which later led to fisheye views[6] used in information visualization.