William Alexander Lester, Jr. has had a distinguished career in research, teaching, and administration. As the associate dean of the University of California at Berkeley's College of Chemistry as well as faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, he has long been at the forefront of molecular collision theory --a field which seeks to explain and predict the essential properties of individual molecules and their effects on each other. Developing the computational methods to accomplish this has also involved him in the most current issues surrounding high-performance computing. Lester has also directed and organized the nation's first unified effort at conducting research in chemistry using computational methods.

Lester was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 24, 1937, to William and Elizabeth Clark Lester. He received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1958 and his master's degree in chemistry from the university a year later. For a...