‘Mo’ Jalie came from an optical family, as his father owned a group of practices in South London. His mother had once been Gandhi's secretary in India. At the age of twelve, he accidentally set fire to a school friend’s cellulose nitrate spectacle frame whilst attempting to adjust it. Despite this early set-back, he still had a keen interest in the profession. Mo had his first proper work experience with a well-established British ophthalmic lens company, Stigmat Ltd, which had been acquired by the Birch Group. He then trained to become a dispensing optician, qualifying via the old SMC (Disp) route in June 1962. He was awarded the Clerk’s Prize for his performance in the final examinations. Mo was known to generations of students as a Lecturer in Dispensing from 1964-1995 at the City College for Further Education in Bunhill Row, London, later called City & East London College and then City & Islington College. During that time, he was promoted to Head of the Centre of Applied Optics from 1987-1995. In 1967 he wrote the first of six editions of his text book 'The Principles of Ophthalmic Lenses', which is thought to be the first text book on the theory of spectacle lenses to be translated into Mandarin. He co-authored a book published in 1974 on ‘Practical Ophthalmic Lenses’ with his colleague, Leonard Wray. His other popular text book, ‘Ophthalmic Lenses & Dispensing’ was first published in 1999.
Besides these books, he wrote many other articles for journals such as ‘Optician’ and ‘Manufacturing Optics International’, on topics such as:
- near prismatic effects
- frame selection
- the thickness of spectacle lenses
- frame heaters
- the use of slide rules
- post-operative cataract spectacles
In 1980 he updated a UK-wide survey of lens usage, originally performed in 1965 by his Stigmat colleague, Arthur Bennett. This led to his conclusion that, at that time, “the prescribing habits of opticians and ophthalmologists have not varied in the period between the surveys”.
Alongside his academic work he was an industry pioneer of lens design, serving as a consultant to several major lens manufacturers and to the Department of Trade and Industry Quality/Manufacturing Initiative. In the 1970s, in collaboration with Rayner’s, he took a great interest in the use of Hewlett-Packard programmable computers and the potential for their use when linked directly to surfacing lathes. He also designed low vision aids for Combined Optical Industries Ltd (COIL).
He was an Examiner for both the British Optical Association (BOA) and the Association of Dispensing Opticians (ADO). He served as an ad hoc Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers representative on the BOA Dispensing Committee in the late 1970s. He also served as Chairman of the Academic Committee for the ADO’s successor body, the Association of British Dispensing Opticians (ABDO) in the 1980s and 1990s. A Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers since qualification, he rose through the Livery to serve as Master in the year 1993-94. At The College of Optometrists' ‘Centenary’ conference in 1995 he presented the inaugural Arthur Bennett Memorial Lecture on ‘Magnification Made Easy’. Among his many honours he was appointed an Honorary Fellow of The College of Optometrists in 1998 and an Honorary Doctor of Science at Ulster University in 2018.