David J Nesbitt earned his B.A. in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard University in 1975 and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1981. He was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Bureau of Standards from 1981-82 and a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley from 1982-84. He currently serves on the Physics and Chemistry faculty at the University of Colorado Boulder and holds a joint appointment at JILA as a Research Fellow.

Nesbitt has received numerous awards for his work, including the American Chemical Society Nobel Laureate Signature Award, 1983 (with S. R. Leone and J. T. Hynes); Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 1987; Wilson Prize Lecture, 1989; Arthur S. Fleming Award for Government Service, 1991; Department of Commerce Silver Medal, 1992; Edward Uhler Condon Award (National Institute for Standards and Technology), 1995; Earle K. Plyler Prize (American Physical Society) 1997; William F. Meggers Award (The Optical Society), 1999; Alexander von Humboldt Senior Scientist Award, 1999; Bourke Medal, Royal Society of Chemistry, Faraday Division, 2002; and Presidential Rank Award, 2009. He is a Fellow of APS, the Royal Society of Chemistry, JILA, and the American Chemistry Society, and he holds an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.