W. E. (William Esco) Moerner, the Harry S. Mosher Professor of Chemistry and professor, by courtesy, of Applied Physics, conducts research in physical chemistry of single molecules, biophysics, nanoparticle trapping, and nanophotonics. He earned three bachelor’s degrees from Washington University in 1975 and master’s and doctoral degrees from Cornell University in 1978 and 1982. From 1981 to 1995, he was a research staff member at IBM, receiving two IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards.

Moerner was Guest Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology from 1993 to 1994 and Professor and Distinguished Chair in Physical Chemistry at the University of California-San Diego from 1995 to 1998, the year he joined the Stanford faculty. He spent time as the Robert B. Woodward Visiting Professor at Harvard University in 1997-1998. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1992 and received the society’s Earle K. Plyler Prize for Molecular Spectroscopy in 2001 and the Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics in 2009. His other elected fellowships include the Optical Society of America, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Australian Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and co-recipient of the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (with Allen Bard) in 2008.

The 2010-11 Flygare Lecture is also available online. For video of the event, please click here.