The author studied technical physics at the Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands. He obtained a masters degree in 1965 with a thesis on the fabrication of lasers. After military service he found a position with Philips Electronics of Eindhoven, where he joined projects in holography, spectroscopy, optical recording and semiconductor laser research. He obtained a doctor's degree from the University of Utrecht with a thesis on Fourier spectroscopy (1974).

In the second half of his Philips career (1982-1997) he was a consultant in industrial metrology.

Dr. Velzel left Philips in 1997 to join the company Nano Focus (Oberhausen, Germany), of which he is a co-founder. After seven years with Nano Focus, where he assisted in the development of confocal microscopes for surface characterisation, he started a new career as a teacher and consultant in optics, which he follows until the present day.

Appeals to students, researchers and professionals

Unique method of lens design, to be applied with or without lens design software

Numerous exercises, stimulating to set up one's own designs

Coverage of main fields of application by discussion of optical instruments

Includes supplementary material: [...]

Preface.- 1 Geometrical Optics.- 2 Optical instruments (paraxial approximation).- 3 Aberrations.- 4 Lens design process.- 5 Design strategies.- 6 Design examples.- References.- List of exercises.- Index.