David R Williams received his BS from Denison University in 1975, his PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1979. He completed postdoctoral work at Bell Labs in 1980. Today, he is William G. Allyn Professor of medical Optics and the University of Rochester. He has served as director for the Center for Visual Science there since 1991. He also serves as associate director for the Center for Adaptive Optics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

He is a Fellow of OSA and AAAS. He received OSA’s Edgar D. Tillyer Award in 1998 “for investigations into the psychophysics and optics of vision that have been uniquely innovative, imaginatively conceived, and impeccable executed, and has greatly advanced our understanding of the factors limiting visual resolution.”