Richard (Dick) W. Lee
Richard W. (Dick) Lee was born in New York City and received his undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He went on to earn his doctor of philosophy in physics from the University of Florida in Gainesville in 1970. From 1970 to 1973, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Spectroscopy Group of the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London.
He joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 1982, where he held many leadership roles over the course of his distinguished career. He served as group leader and associate division leader for High Temperature Theory, project leader for Physics Research at the Janus Laser Facility, program leader for Applied Physics, and later, as senior scientist responsible for developing scientific efforts in high-energy-density science both within LLNL and in the broader external community.
During his tenure at LLNL, he developed techniques for analyzing the radiative properties of hot, dense laboratory plasmas that are now used worldwide. He was an early and influential advocate for expanding the science program on the NOVA laser beyond fusion, helping to establish what is now known as high-energy-density physics. He was also an early champion of developing national security programs on NOVA, efforts that helped motivate support for the National Ignition Facility. He served as associate editor of the Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer and later founded and edited the journal High Energy Density Physics.
He later became associate director of the Institute for Material Dynamics at Extreme Conditions at UC Berkeley. During a time of close association with UC Berkeley’s Physics Department, he led development of research programs in the science of materials at high energy density, often referred to as warm dense matter. Expanding on this, together with Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, he pioneered research into materials in extreme conditions using fourth-generation free electron X-ray lasers in the United States and Germany).
He was a member of SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) Science Advisory Committee. He was the driving force behind the creation of the Matter in Extreme Conditions end station at LCLS, and in the years leading up to retirement, he joined SLAC/LCLS as the head of the science and research division. Over the course of his career, He authored roughly 400 peer-reviewed scientific papers, which have received more than 10,000 citations. His contributions were recognized by the scientific community with numerous honors, including election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1997 and the John Dawson Award in 2015. In 2021, he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Aix-Marseille University, one of the highest honors a university can bestow.
