Fifty years of inherent optical properties

This paper describes my career in Ocean Optics over nearly half a century. It was centered around the Inherent Optical Properties (IOP, the scattering and absorption properties of sea water and its dissolved and suspended materials). The paper describes the development of instrumentation for the measurement of the IOP, the applicable theories, and the inversions to obtain biogeochemical parameters. This is not intended to be a thorough review, but rather describes a personal journey.