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David DiLaura

American engineer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 8, 2026
Entity authorityQ5232954 ↗
Source-derived summary

David L. DiLaura (Boulder, Colorado) is an American engineer, educator and pioneer in lighting calculation software.

DiLaura is a Fellow and Gold Medalist of the Illuminating Engineering Society, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of Tau Beta Pi, and has his LC. He has been topic editor of the 8th and 9th editions of the IES Lighting Handbook and editor of the 10th edition, he has published 42 technical papers, a translation and analysis of Johann Lambert's seminal Latin work "Photometria", authored "A History of Light and Lighting", and for eight years was Editor-in-Chief of LEUKOS, the journal of the Illuminating Engineering Society.

He was inducted into the Architectural Lighting Hall of Fame in 2001, and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado in 2008.

Works

DiLaura, David L. (2001). Photometry, or On the Measure and Gradations of Light, Colors, and Shade. A translation of J.H. Lambert's Photometria. New York: Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. ISBN 0-87995-179-6. Archived from the original on May 10, 2012.

DiLaura, David L. (2006).

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “David DiLaura” as american engineer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2001, 2008, 2012, 2006—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where David, DiLaura and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american engineer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5232954. VIAF identifies the subject as 75971990. The Library of Congress control number is no2001073303. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2001, 2008, 2012 and 2006.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

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  2. Expand the search: follow David DiLaura primary sources, David DiLaura archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “David DiLaura” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.