Bryce Bayer, a retired Kodak scientist and the inventor of a widely used color filter array that bears his name, has died. He was 83.

Bayer, of Brunswick, Maine, died Nov. 13, a spokeswoman for Direct Cremation of Maine confirmed Friday. The cause of death wasn't released.

His Bayer filter was patented in 1975 and is incorporated into nearly every digital camera and camera phone, Rochester, N.Y.-based Kodak said in a 2009 press release announcing Bayer's receipt that year of the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Award.

"The elegant color technology invented by Bryce Bayer is behind nearly every digital image captured today," Dr. Terry Taber, Kodak's chief technology officer, said at the time.

The filter allows devices to capture color images with a single sensor.

Bayer also developed widely cited processes for storing, improving and printing digital images before retiring from Kodak in the mid-1990s.