William M Gelbart
UCLA, USA
Biography
Professor Gelbart was trained as a physical chemical theorist, obtaining his BS at Harvard University (1967) and his PhD at the University of Chicago (1970). After two years of postdoctoral work, at the University of Paris and UC Berkeley, he joined the Berkeley faculty in 1972, continuing his researches on the quantum theory of photochemistry. Prof. Gelbart moved to UCLA in 1975, switched fields, and became a leader in the then-emerging field of “complex fluids”, contributing significantly to the statistical mechanical theory of liquid crystals, polymer solutions, colloids, and selfâ€assembling systems. A dozen years ago he became deeply intrigued by viruses and, with his colleague Charles M. Knobler, established a laboratory to investigate simple viruses outside their hosts and isolated in test tubes. This work, along with that of several other groups in the States and Europe, helped launch the burgeoning field of “physical virology”. Prof. Gelbart’s interdisciplinary research has been recognized by many awards, including the 1991 Lennardâ€Jones Medal of the British Royal Society, a 1998 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2001 Liquids Prize of the American Chemical Society, election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and endowed lectureships at the Curie Institute (Paris), the University of Leeds (England), Case Western Reserve University, Cornell University, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Pittsburgh. At UCLA he won the 1996 University Distinguished Teaching Award, and served as Chair of Chemistry and Biochemistry (2000-2004). He is currently UCLA Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and a member of the California NanoSystems Insitute and Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA.