Dudley Williams (physicist)

Francis Dudley Williams (April 12, 1912 – December 2, 2004) was an American physicist. He served as president of the Optical Society of America from 1976 to 1980.^[1][2]

Williams was born to Ethel Turner and Arthur Dudley Williams in Covington, Georgia, on April 12, 1912. In 1927, he entered Oxford College of Emory University, at Oxford, Georgia. A family move prompted him to transfer to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received an undergraduate degree in 1933.^[1] He pursued graduate studies at several institutions, but settled on UNC, where he received his MA in 1934 and his PhD in physics in 1936 for a thesis on IR spectroscopy.^[3]

In 1937, Williams married Loraine Decherd, a graduate physics student whom he met while teaching at the University of Texas in 1934. They had a son and a daughter.^[3] She died in 1988. He later married Marie Sovereign, who survived him.

Francis Dudley Williams died on December 2, 2004, at Mesilla Valley Hospice in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He was 92 years old.

In 1936, Williams was employed by the physics faculty at the University of Florida in Gainesville; he taught there until 1941. From 1941 through 1943, he participated in radar development at MIT’s Radiation Laboratory, then was moved to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory to work on the atomic bomb. The galvanometers he designed were used to measure the thermal radiation produced during the Trinity test in July 1945. He remained with Los Alamos until 1946.^[3]

In 1946, Williams joined Ohio State University, where he gained an international reputation in IR physics. He and another OSU physics professor (George Shortley) co-wrote an engineering-physics textbook that remained in print for 30 years. In 1963, Williams joined North Carolina State University as head of its physics department. In 1964, he accepted a position as Regents Distinguished Professor of Physics at Kansas State University in Manhattan, where he remained until his retirement in 1982.

While at KSU, Williams continued his research in IR spectroscopy of gases, liquids, and solids, and investigated transmission and reflection spectra. He also continued teaching and loved to do lecture demonstrations.^[4]

• Presidente de la Sociedad Óptica de América (1976–1980)
• Recibió la Medalla Emory en 2000 (otorgada a exalumnos destacados de Emory).
• Nombrado miembro de la Fundación John Simon Guggenheim Memorial en 1955 ^{[ 5 ]}
• Nombrado miembro de Oxford, Reino Unido (1956) ^{[ 3 ]}
• Nombrado miembro de universidades e instituciones en Bélgica y los Países Bajos ^{[ 3 ]}
• Nombrado becario postdoctoral sénior de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias en la Universidad de Astrofísica de la Universidad de Lieja en Bélgica y en el Laboratorio Nacional de Física de Teddington en el Reino Unido (1961-1962).

• Sociedad Óptica de América#Expresidentes de la OSA

• Artículos publicados por los primeros presidentes de la OSA. Archivados el 20 de marzo de 2015 en la Wayback Machine . Revista de la Sociedad Óptica de América.