[COLOUR THEORY] Атлас цветов / Atlas tsvetov [i.e., Atlas of colours]

RABKIN, E[FIM], B[ORISOVICH] (1895-1981).

Gosudarstvennoe Izd. Meditsinskoi Literatury (Medgiz), Moscow, 1956.

Original dark green buckram, with lettering title and author’s name on spine and front board. Large roy. 8vo. (23,5 x 18 cm). In Russian. 52, [3] p. of text containing 17 monochrome illustrations and diagrams, accompanied by 37 separate colour chart plates, including cut-out elements and transparent overlays annotated with numerical values, with a template device that masks the colour charts in the end-pocket on rear pastedown. A fine copy. 

First edition of the third volume in Rabkin’s corpus, which further developed and significantly refined his Polychromatic Tables for the Study of Colour Vision. The other works in this series include Pigment Tables for the Study of Acquired Pathology of Colour Sensitivity (1951), Tables for the Study of Contrast Sensitivity of the Eye (1951), and the Monograph Guide to Rational Colour Design (1964).

Efim Borisovich Rabkin was the Soviet Chief Ophthalmologist of the Ministry of Health of the Ukrainian SSR and the Chief Physician of the Moscow Eye Hospital. He is best known as the creator of the Rabkin polychromatic tables, widely used for studying colour perception. Rabkin’s early scientific work in the 1920s focused on the treatment of trachoma and combating blindness in Ukraine. In 1929, he presented a report on trachoma at the XIII International Ophthalmological Congress in Amsterdam. Later, his research shifted to the physiology and pathology of colour vision. He introduced a classification for congenital and acquired disorders of colour vision and developed methods for training and improving colour perception. Modern ophthalmologists recognize Rabkin as the founder of the national school for studying physiology and pathology of colour vision, as well as the hygiene of colour discrimination. His methods provided the foundation for developing and refining techniques for medical examinations of colour vision, particularly for workers in transportation professions.

MEDGIZ was originally established in 1918 as the publishing arm of the People’s Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR, with the primary purpose of publishing essential material of the medical literature.

OCLC records 14 copies (13370829), with 9 copies held by North American libraries.