R. Stephen Berry, PhD

Recruiment and Screening Panel

R. Stephen Berry is the James Franck Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Chicago and holds appointments in the College, the James Franck Institute and the Department of Chemistry. He is Special Advisor to the Director of Argonne National Laboratory for National Security. He has also held an appointment in the School of Public Policy Studies at the University and has worked on a variety of subjects ranging from strictly scientific matters to the analysis of energy use and resource policy. His scientific research has been theoretical, in part, in areas of finite-time thermodynamics, atomic collisions, atomic and molecular clusters and chaos, topographies and dynamics of complex potential surfaces, clusters and proteins, and, in part, experimental, involving studies of chemical reactions, photoionization and other laser-matter interactions. Some of his work outside traditional science has involved interweaving thermodynamics with economics and resource policy, including efficient use of energy. He has also worked since the mid-1970's with issues of science and the law, and with management of scientific data, activities that have brought him into the arena of electronic media for scientific information and issues of intellectual property in that context. He attended Harvard where he received his AB, AM, and PhD, in 1952, 1954, and 1956, respectively. He remained at Harvard for 18 months as an instructor after receiving his doctorate. He was then an instructor at the University of Michigan from 1957 to 1960 and an Assistant Professor at Yale University from 1960 until 1964 before moving to the University of Chicago. He has been a visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen (1967 and 1979), the Université de Paris-Sud (1979-80), and Oxford University(1973-74, 1980), where he was the Newton-Abraham Professor in 1986-87. He spent 1994 at the Freie Universität Berlin as the winner of the Humboldt Prize. He has continued to have close associations with the Aspen Center for Physics (Board of Directors, 1978-84) and with the Telluride Summer Research Center for Physics (Board of Directors, 1984-present; President, 1989-93). In 1983 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. In 1997, he received the Heyrovsky Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences. His current interests include the dynamics of atomic and molecular clusters, the basis of "guided" protein folding and other "structure-seeking" processes, and the thermodynamics of time-constrained processes and the efficient use of energy. He is also interested in a variety of issues concerning science and public policy, including precollegiate education and scientific literacy, the impact of electronic communication on the sciences, and the conduct of scholarly work in general. He is a member and Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences (Home Secretary, 1999-2003), a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Chairman of the Midwest Center and Vice President, 1986-89; Vice President, 1994-98), and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences.