David Arthur Shirley (March 30, 1934 – March 29, 2021) was an American chemist, best known as the fourth director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 1980 to 1989, and for spearheading the funding and creation of the

Advanced Light Source The Advanced Light Source (ALS) is a research facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California. One of the world's brightest sources of ultraviolet and soft x-ray light, the ALS is the first "third-generation" synchrotro ...

Biography

David Arthur Shirley was born in

North Conway, New Hampshire North Conway is a census-designated place (CDP) and village in eastern Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 2,116 at the 2020 census. A year-round resort area, North Conway is the second-largest village within the to ...

, on March 30, 1934. He earned a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

degree in chemistry from the

University of Maine The University of Maine (UMaine or UMO) is a public land-grant research university in Orono, Maine. It was established in 1865 as the land-grant college of Maine and is the flagship university of the University of Maine System. It is classifie ...

in 1955, and then entered the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, where he completed his PhD, writing his 1959 doctoral thesis on "The heat capacities and entropies of iodine and lithium chloride from 15 to 325 degrees Kelvin", under the supervision of

William Giauque William Francis Giauque (;''The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia'', 2004. May 12, 1895 – March 28, 1982) was a Canadian-born American chemist and Nobel laureate recognized in 1949 for his studies in the properties of matter at temperatures clo ...

. Shirley married Virginia Schultz in 1956, and they had five children together, David, Diane, Michael, Eric and Gail Shirley. Shirley has a total of eleven grandchildren, Brian, Arthur, Kevin, Colleen, Sarah, Lauren, Catalina, Wendell, Wilbur, Darian and Madelyn. Shirley became a lecturer in chemistry at Berkeley in 1959, an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree A docto ...

in 1960, an associate professor in 1964, and a full

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

in 1967. The following year he became chairman of the Chemistry Department. He was a

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

fellow at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

in 1966–67, and was awarded the

United States Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President ...

Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award was established in 1959 in honor of a scientist who helped elevate American physics to the status of world leader in the field. E. O. Lawrence was the inventor of the cyclotron, an accelerator of subatomic par ...

in 1972. His early research was into

low temperature physics In physics, cryogenics is the production and behaviour of materials at very low temperatures. The 13th IIR International Congress of Refrigeration (held in Washington DC in 1971) endorsed a universal definition of “cryogenics” and “cr ...

, nuclear orientation, and

hyperfine interactions In atomic physics, hyperfine structure is defined by small shifts in otherwise degenerate energy levels and the resulting splittings in those energy levels of atoms, molecules, and ions, due to electromagnetic multipole interaction between the nu ...

, particularly the

Mössbauer effect The Mössbauer effect, or recoilless nuclear resonance fluorescence, is a physical phenomenon discovered by Rudolf Mössbauer in 1958. It involves the resonant and recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma radiation by atomic nuclei bound in ...

, and he was a pioneer of

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is a surface-sensitive quantitative spectroscopic technique based on the photoelectric effect that can identify the elements that exist within a material (elemental composition) or are covering its surface, ...

. In 1975, Shirley became the Associate Laboratory Director and Head, Materials and Molecular Research Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He was its fourth director, from 1980 to 1989, and was the first chemist to head the laboratory. He took the helm at a time when the laboratory had to deal with deep funding cuts, and spent most of his first two years in the job managing them. Having weathered the crisis, he attempted to prevent its recurrence by broadening the range of research projects, such as research into treatments for ocular melanoma, and development of

Mina Bissell Mina J. Bissell is an Iranian-American biologist known for her research on breast cancer. In particular, she has studied the effects of a cell's microenvironment, including its extracellular matrix, on tissue function. Early life and educatio ...

extracellular matrix In biology, the extracellular matrix (ECM), also called intercellular matrix, is a three-dimensional network consisting of extracellular macromolecules and minerals, such as collagen, enzymes, glycoproteins and hydroxyapatite that provide s ...

model of

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a r ...

. In 1987, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was chosen to participate in the Human Genome Project. Another initiative was the Center for Advanced Materials (CAM). In turn, this led to the establishment of the Center for X-Ray Optics (CXRO), the world's first research facility devoted to specialise in the use of

soft x-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 ...

s and

extreme ultraviolet Extreme ultraviolet radiation (EUV or XUV) or high-energy ultraviolet radiation is electromagnetic radiation in the part of the electromagnetic spectrum spanning wavelengths from 124 nm down to 10 nm, and therefore (by the Planck–E ...

light known as XUV. As it turned out, these are ideal for manipulating the atoms and molecules on materials' surfaces, where most chemical reactions take place. In 1984, Shirley proposed the construction of the

, a synchrotron optimized to produce XUV. Not everyone saw the value in it, but the scientific case was sound, and Shirley eventually secured $100 million of funding from the

Secretary of Energy The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the presidential line of succession. The position was created on October 1, 1977, when Pr ...

, John S. Herrington. It was the first synchrotron to be built at Berkeley in almost thirty years, and was built on the site of

Ernest Lawrence Ernest Orlando Lawrence (August 8, 1901 – August 27, 1958) was an American nuclear physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation fo ...

's 184-inch synchrotron. Shirley stepped down as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on August 31, 1989, but remained at Berkeley as a professor. In 1992 he accepted a position as senior vice president for research and graduate education at Pennsylvania State University. He increased the number of minorities in graduate school, and reduced the average time to graduate. Although this was a time when the

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

was cutting Federal funding for research, he positioned the university so as to make the best of available opportunities, and cemented its place as the premier state university in the country for research funding from industry. He retired at the end of 1996, and returned to California with his second wife, Barbara.

Notes

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Shirley, David Arthur 1934 births 2021 deaths 21st-century American chemists People from North Conway, New Hampshire University of California faculty Pennsylvania State University faculty Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people University of Maine alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni