William R. Ott
(Contact Information)

William R. Ott, Deputy Director, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology. Administers the operations of the Laboratory as delegated by the Director; advises the Director of the Laboratory on budgeting, programming, administrative guidelines, and on long-range planning for programs and facilities; effects new programs and program coordination among the Divisions, other units of the Laboratory and other organizations, particularly other federal agencies involved with atomic, molecular, optical physics, and radiation physics research and technology.

Dr. Ott has served as Chief of the Radiation Physics Division of the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), Chief of the NIST Electron and Optical Physics Division, and Deputy Director of the NIST Center for Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the Washington Academy of Sciences, and was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow in 1977.

His personal research has been in the fields of electron-atom collisions, plasma spectroscopy, and ultraviolet radiation physics and metrology. He developed the first laboratory light source to serve as a primary standard of near and vacuum ultraviolet radiation and several discharge lamps that serve as secondary standards of radiation. These sources are being used in about 50 laboratories throughout the world for ultraviolet radiation applications.