William A. Lester, Jr., Ph.D.
Dr. Lester, Professor of Chemistry, UC, Berkeley and Faculty
Senior Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
earned BS and MS degrees from the University of Chicago, and a
PhD from The Catholic U. of America, all in chemistry. After
postdoctoral work at the Theoretical Chemistry Institute, U.
Wisconsin-Madison, he was appointed Assistant Director of the
Institute and Lecturer in the UWM Chemistry Department. In
1968 he joined the IBM Research Division, served on the
Technical Planning staff of the Research Division and as a
research group manager. In 1978 he was selected to head the first
national research organization in the field of chemistry, The
National Resource for Computation in Chemistry, housed at Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory, and was concurrently an Associate Director of the Laboratory. In 1981 he
was appointed Professor of Chemistry and in 1991-95 Associate Dean, College of
Chemistry, UCB. In 1995-96 he served on the NSF Director’s staff as Senior Fellow for
Science & Engineering and Assistant to the Director for Human Resource Development.
Lester's research interests are in electronic structure and collision dynamics of atomic and
molecular systems. He has published over 200 scientific articles and a book, and is editor
or co-editor of four other volumes. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, the California Academy of
Sciences, and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science.