Elected: 1991
Country (Nationality)
United States
Discipline
Physical Sciences
Bio
Walter E. Massey, Ph.D., is President Emeritus of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and of Morehouse College, and Retired Chairman of Bank of America.
He has been provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of the University of California System. where he was responsible for academic and research planning and policy, budget planning and allocations, and programmatic oversight of three Department of Energy National laboratories: Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley
A prominent physicist, Massey has served as Director of the Argonne National Laboratory, Vice president for Research, and professor of physics at the University of Chicago. He also served as Director of the National Science Foundation from 1991 to 1993. Additional credentials in Massey's career in academics includes serving as Professor of Physics and Dean of the College at Brown University.In the corporate sector Massey has served as a director and Chairman of Bank of America, and a director of the First National Bank of Chicago, Delta Airlines, McDonald’s, Amoco and British Petroleum, and Motorola, among others. Massey has notably been the recipient of more than 40 honorary degrees from institutions that include Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Northwestern, Amherst, and Ohio State. Much of his research has involved theories of quantum liquids and solids, and he has written about university-industry partnerships and the issue of technology transfer. More specifically, he has addressed the distribution of skills among institutions, and the need to develop greater accessibility to new technology and materials. Throughout his academic career, Massey has been an advocate for issues surrounding minority students and education. He developed and directed the Inner-City Teachers of Science Program (ICTOS) while at Brown University, where college students studying education became tutors and mentors in urban classrooms.