Dr. W. Thomas Williams Provost Professor of Physics Washington & Lee University

H. Thomas Williams has been a member of the W&L faculty since 1974, helping to build Physics and Engineering into a student-centered and collaborative research department. He chaired the department from 1989-2000 and, in 1994, was named W&L’s Edwin A. Morris Professor of Physics.

In his career at W&L, Williams has held key administrative positions including associate dean of the College from 1986-89. He also has served on numerous academic committees, including presidential search panels, and has been an advisor to five W&L presidents. Concurrently, Williams continued advising and teaching students, as well as publishing 29 scientific articles based on his work in theoretical nuclear and particle physics. Williams served as a consultant to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory from 1987-1993 and as a consultant to the National Bureau of Standards from 1974-1986.

Following his education at the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.S. and a Ph.D. in physics, Williams was a National Science Foundation post-doctoral research fellow at the National Bureau of Standards from 1967-69 and conducted research the following year at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Universitaet Erlangen-Nuernberg in Germany. From 1971-73, Williams was a staff scientist at Kaman Sciences Corporation in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he was responsible for theoretical studies of electromagnetic shielding, classical field transmission and reception.

He is a native of Hampton, Virginia.