On January 1, Stanley S. Ballard, chairman of the Department of Physics at the University of Florida, took office as president of the Optical Society of America for 1963. Dr. Ballard, who was the Society's president‐elect during 1962 and who previously served for a number of years as vice president for meetings of the OSA, is a former president of the International Commission on Optics, secretary of the Physics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and retiring president of the national physics honor society, Sigma Pi Sigma. Richard C. Lord, a member of the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of its Spectroscopy Laboratory, has been named president‐elect of the Optical Society for the coming year. Dr. Lord, an authority on far infrared spectroscopy and president of the Commission on Molecular Spectroscopy of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, will assume the OSA presidency in January 1964.