Arnold Wilkins received his doctorate for work on semantic memory. He then spent two years at the Montreal Neurological Institute, where he encountered a patient who had seizures whenever she saw striped lines. His interest in photosensitive epilepsy thus kindled, he returned to the UK to work at the MRC Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge, where he spend the next 22 years. His interest in photosensitivity expanded to include photophobia and associated reading difficulty.  He demonstrated that the invisible 100Hz flicker from fluorescent lighting causes headaches. He moved to a chair at Essex University in 1997, where he is now Emeritus. He is currently studying the effects of high-frequency flicker on reading.