I am the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor in Physics, and a member of the multidisciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, at Princeton University. I help to direct the Center for the Physics of Biological Function, which supports a highly interactive community of junior and senior scientists interested in the physics of life.
I grew up in San Francisco, where I attended public schools. For college I went across the Bay to the University of California at Berkeley, and stayed for my PhD. After postdoctoral years in Groningen, the Netherlands, and at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, I returned to Berkeley to join the faculty jointly in Physics and Biophysics. Four years later I moved east to the newly established NEC Research Institute, and then to Princeton in 2001. Along the way I have held a number of visiting positions, most recently at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where I helped to launch the Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences.
I have been incredibly fortunate to have wonderful scientific collaborations, and to have worked with an extraordinary stream of younger colleagues.
For more about me: I had the honor of speaking in the Living Histories series from the American Physical Society’s Division of Biological Physics; these are short autobiographical pieces (with Q&A) from many members of our community. A much longer version is part of the American Institute of Physics Oral History Project.
William (Bill) Bialek 