David A. Shirley

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David A. Shirley
Born(1934-03-30)March 30, 1934
North Conway, New Hampshire
DiedMarch 29, 2021(2021-03-29) (aged 86)
CitizenshipAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Maine
University of California, Berkeley
Known forDirector of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
AwardsErnest Orlando Lawrence Award (1972)
Scientific career
FieldsChemistry
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Pennsylvania State University
Thesis The heat capacities and entropies of iodine and lithium chloride from 15 to 325 degrees Kelvin  (1959)
Doctoral advisorWilliam Giauque

David Arthur Shirley (March 30, 1934 – March 29, 2021) was an American chemist, best known as the fourth director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1980 to 1989, and for spearheading the funding and creation of the Advanced Light Source.

Biography

David Arthur Shirley was born in

PhD, writing his 1959 doctoral thesis on "The heat capacities and entropies of iodine and lithium chloride from 15 to 325 degrees Kelvin", under the supervision of William Giauque.[2]

Shirley married Virginia Schultz in 1956, and they had five children together, David, Diane, Michael, Eric and Gail Shirley. Shirley has a total of eleven grandchildren, Brian, Arthur, Kevin, Colleen, Sarah, Lauren, Catalina, Wendell, Wilbur, Darian and Madelyn.[4]

Shirley became a lecturer in chemistry at Berkeley in 1959, an

low temperature physics, nuclear orientation, and hyperfine interactions, particularly the Mössbauer effect, and he was a pioneer of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.[3]

In 1975, Shirley became the Associate Laboratory Director and Head, Materials and Molecular Research Division of the

ocular melanoma, and development of Mina Bissell's extracellular matrix model of breast cancer. In 1987, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was chosen to participate in the Human Genome Project.[5]

Another initiative was the Center for Advanced Materials (CAM). In turn, this led to the establishment of the Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), the world's first research facility devoted to specialise in the use of

soft x-rays and extreme ultraviolet light known as XUV. As it turned out, these are ideal for manipulating the atoms and molecules on materials' surfaces, where most chemical reactions take place. In 1984, Shirley proposed the construction of the Advanced Light Source, a synchrotron optimized to produce XUV. Not everyone saw the value in it, but the scientific case was sound, and Shirley eventually secured $100 million of funding from the Secretary of Energy, John S. Herrington. It was the first synchrotron to be built at Berkeley in almost thirty years, and was built on the site of Ernest Lawrence's 184-inch synchrotron.[5]

Shirley stepped down as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on August 31, 1989,[5] but remained at Berkeley as a professor. In 1992 he accepted a position as senior vice president for research and graduate education at Pennsylvania State University. He increased the number of minorities in graduate school, and reduced the average time to graduate. Although this was a time when the United States Congress was cutting Federal funding for research, he positioned the university so as to make the best of available opportunities, and cemented its place as the premier state university in the country for research funding from industry. He retired at the end of 1996, and returned to California with his second wife, Barbara.[6]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "David Shirley". Array of Contemporary American Physicists. Archived from the original on 7 May 2016. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
  2. ^ a b Shirley, David Arthur (January 1959). "The heat capacities and entropies of iodine and lithium chloride from 15 to 325 degrees Kelvin". University of California, Berkeley.
  3. ^ a b c d Stöhr, Joachim (July 4, 2014). "In Honor of David Shirley, Person, Scientist and Leader: 80th Birthday Symposium" (PDF). Berlin: Free University of Berlin. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
  4. ^ "In Memoriam – Virginia Shirley". lbl.gove. Retrieved August 28, 2020.
  5. ^ a b c "An Historical Perspective on the Lab's Legacy: A Year-Long Series in The View: Part Six". Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Retrieved 18 April 2016.
  6. ^ "Shirley To Retire At End Of Year". April 24, 1996. Retrieved 18 April 2016.

External links

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