William H. Press | |
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| Born | William Henry Press (1948-05-23)May 23, 1948 (age 77) New York City, U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University, (A.B.) California Institute of Technology, (Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Press–Schechter formalism Numerical Recipes |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | theoretical physics astrophysics computer science |
| Institutions | Harvard University Los Alamos National Laboratory University of Texas at Austin |
| Doctoral advisor | Kip Thorne |
| Doctoral students | Ethan Vishniac David Spergel Robert Brandenberger Adam Riess |
William Henry Press (born May 23, 1948) is an astrophysicist, theoretical physicist, computer scientist, and computational biologist. He is a member of theU.S. National Academy of Sciences, theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, and theCouncil on Foreign Relations. In 1989, he was elected aFellow of the American Physical Society"in recognition of important theoretical contributions to relativistic astrophysics and to cosmology"[1] Other honors include the 1981Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy.[2][3] Press has been a member of theJASON defense advisory group since 1977 and is a past chair.[4]
From 2009 through 2016, Press served as vice-chair of President Obama'sPresident's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).[5] In 2012–2013, he served as the165th President of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science.[6] In July, 2016, he became the elected treasurer of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a member of its council and governing board.[7]
The son ofgeophysicistFrank Press, and a schoolteacher mother and administrator who "loved teaching science to kids,[8][9] Press attended public schools in Pasadena, California, graduating fromPasadena High School in 1965.
Press identified his early educational experience as having specifically benefited from the boons of the post WWII educational drive and the sexism of that same era, when "women were limited in their career choices, and many smart women became schoolteachers," and WWII veterans, "who had gone to college on theGI Bill of Rights ... saw public-school teaching as an upwardly mobile profession."[8]
His undergraduate education was atHarvard, where he received an A.B. in physics in 1969. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics fromCaltech in 1972 as a student ofKip Thorne.[10]
Press was briefly an assistant professor at Caltech, then was an assistant professor atPrinceton University (1974–1976) before returning to Harvard as a professor in 1976. At the age of 28, he was the university's then-youngest tenured faculty member (a distinction earlier held byAlan Dershowitz and later byLawrence Summers and—at age 26—Noam Elkies).[11]
Press was for more than 20 years a professor of astronomy and physics atHarvard University, and a member of theCenter for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. He was department chair in Astronomy in 1982–1985. In 1998, Press left Harvard to become deputy laboratory director atLos Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), serving under DirectorsJohn C. Browne andGeorge Peter Nanos.[12] He oversaw LANL's participation in theJoint Genome Institute and in the construction of theSpallation Neutron Source. Press moved to theUniversity of Texas at Austin in 2007 and, changing his area of research, became the Warren J. and Viola M. Raymer Professor, jointly in the computer science and integrative biology departments.
In the field ofgeneral relativity, Press is best known for his work withSaul Teukolsky, establishing the dynamic stability ofrotating black holes.[13] In astrophysics, Press is best known for his discovery, withPaul Schechter, of thePress–Schechter formalism, which predicts the distribution of masses of galaxies in the Universe;[14] and for his work withAdam Riess andRobert Kirshner on the calibration of distantsupernovas as "standard candles". This latter work enabled[15][16] the discovery of theaccelerating universe by Riess,Brian Schmidt, andSaul Perlmutter, for which they received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Notably, with the 2017 Nobel award to Kip Thorne, Press joined the list of hapless individuals whose student and doctoral advisor have both won Nobels,but they haven't, a list that comprisesAlfred Sturtevant,Gilbert N. Lewis,J. Robert Oppenheimer,Edward Teller,Victor Weisskopf,Charles Lauritsen,E.B. Wilson,Richard A. Muller,Sam Treiman,Sidney Coleman and a few others.
WithFreeman Dyson, Press discovered and named thezero-determinant strategies for thePrisoner's Dilemma and other games.[17]
Press is a co-author of the successful textbookNumerical Recipes (three editions, as of 2019 more than 400,000 copies in print)[8] on scientific computing.
