William Gelbart

William Gelbart is the Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his B.S. degree from Harvard University in 1967 and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1970. Following postdoctoral fellowships as an NSF-NATO Fellow in Paris in 1971 and a Miller Institute Fellow at UC Berkeley in 1972, he joined the UC Berkeley Chemistry faculty as Assistant Professor in 1972. In 1975, he moved to UCLA as Associate Professor, was promoted to Professor in 1979, and to Distinguished Professor in 1999. He served as Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA from 2001 to 2004.

Gelbart was trained as a theoretical physical chemist in molecular spectroscopy and photophysics, with research evolving through statistical physics of simple fluids near critical points to complex fluids, including liquid crystal phase transitions, micellar solutions, thin films, colloidal suspensions, and high polymers. During his 1999-2000 sabbatical at the Curie Institute in Paris, he began studying simple viruses, directing a research program in physical virology that treats viruses as physical objects and employs virus-like particles as delivery vehicles for genes and drugs. Key publications include "Thermodynamic control of gold nanocrystal size: experiment and theory" (Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1995), "DNA packaging and ejection forces in bacteriophage" (PNAS, 2001), "Origin of icosahedral symmetry in viruses" (PNAS, 2004), and "Physical chemistry of DNA viruses" (Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, 2009). He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received Sloan, Dreyfus, and Guggenheim Fellowships, the Lennard-Jones Medal of the British Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society "Liquids" Prize, the UCLA Glenn T. Seaborg Medal, and the University Distinguished Teaching Award, along with numerous endowed lectureships. In 2016, a Festschrift issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry B and a symposium at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics honored his contributions.

Professional Email: gelbart@chem.ucla.edu