Michael Stewart Witherell (born 22 September 1949) is an American physicist and laboratory director.Michael S. Witherell , Array of Contemporary Physicists
/ref> He has been the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory since 2016. Witherell, a particle physicist, previously served as Director of

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been opera ...

. He was a particle physicist at the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

and also served as vice chancellor for research there.

Early life and education

He was born 22 September 1949 in

Toledo, Ohio Toledo ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lucas County, Ohio, United States. A major Midwestern United States port city, Toledo is the fourth-most populous city in the state of Ohio, after Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati, and according ...

. Witherell received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1968 and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from the

University of Wisconsin, Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

in 1973.

Career

From 1973 to 1981 he was on the faculty of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. He was a member of the physics faculty at the

from 1981 to 1999. In 1985 Witherell led an experiment at

which was the first to isolate a large sample of particles containing the

charm quark The charm quark, charmed quark or c quark (from its symbol, c) is the third-most massive of all quarks, a type of elementary particle. Charm quarks are found in hadrons, which are subatomic particles made of quarks. Examples of hadrons containin ...

using the new technology of silicon microstrip detectors. He received the 1990

Panofsky Prize The Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics is an annual prize of the American Physical Society. It is given to recognize and encourage outstanding achievements in experimental particle physics, and is open to scientists of any nation. It w ...

from the American Physical Society for this research. In 1998 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Witherell served as the Director of the

from 1999 to 2005. In 2005 he returned to UC Santa Barbara as the Vice Chancellor for Research, serving in that role until 2016. In January 2016, the

University of California Board of Regents The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of the same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a state university sys ...

appointed him to be the Director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2017 he was elected to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

Boards

Witherell chaired the Fermilab Program Advisory Committee from 1987 to 1989 and the

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...

Scientific Policy Committee from 1994 to 1996, and the

High Energy Physics Advisory Panel The High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) is a permanent advisory committee to the United States Department of Energy and the National Academy of Sciences, created in 1967 and organized under the Federal Advisory Committee Act The Federal Adv ...

of the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

from 1997 to 1999. He chaired the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee (MPSAC) of the NSF from 2006 to 2008 and the National Academy of Science's Board on Physics and Astronomy from 2015 to 2016.

Personal life

His wife Beth Witherell is a literary historian and editor-in-chief of The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau project at UC Santa Barbara.

Awards and honors

*1986: elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society *1988: Guggenheim Fellow for the academic year 1988–1989John Simon Guggenheim Foundation , Michael S. Witherell
/ref> *1990: awarded the

*1998: elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences *2004: received the Gold Award of the US Secretary of Energy *2017: elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

References

External links

Berkeley Lab Director Michael Witherell

* ttp://www.fnal.gov/pub/ferminews/FermiNews99-03-19.pdf Fermi News, March 1999, appointment of Witherell as Director of Fermilab
Science Blog — Distinguished Physicist Michael Witherell Appointed Director of Fermilab
* with

Helen Quinn Helen Rhoda Arnold Quinn (born 19 May 1943) is an Australian-born particle physicist and educator who has made major contributions to both fields. Her contributions to theoretical physics include the Peccei–Quinn theory which implies a corres ...

''The asymmetry between matter and antimatter.''
Scientific American, October 1998
Michael S. Witherell's profile and scientific publications
on INSPIRE-HEP {{DEFAULTSORT:Witherell, Michael Stewart 1949 births Living people University of Michigan alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni University of California, Santa Barbara faculty Fellows of the American Physical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Winners of the Panofsky Prize 21st-century American physicists Particle physicists People from Toledo, Ohio People associated with Fermilab