André Maréchal was director general of the French Institut d'Optique. In 1986 Maréchal was elected to Honorary Membership of the Optical Society its highest honor, for his work in the areas of coherence, diffraction, geometric optics, image formation and image processing, and for his contributions to the international optics community. His pioneering work influenced the development of computer programs that optimized lens designs and advanced the automatic optimization of optical systems. He strongly contributed to the promotion of Fourier optics and analog optical computing.
