Michael Duryea Williams

Physicist Michael Duryea Williams was born on January 5, 1957 to Claudia Williams and Henry Williams, Jr. in Dothan, Alabama. Williams attended Dothan High School in Dothan, Alabama and was a 1974 National Achievement Scholarship Program for Outstanding Negro Students finalist. He received his B.S. degree in physics from Morehouse College in 1979, his B.S. degree in nuclear engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1979, his M.S. degree in physics from Stanford University in 1981, and his Ph.D. degree in physics from Stanford University in 1987.

Williams was a research assistant at Stanford University between 1980 and 1986, as well as a visiting scientist at IBM’s Almaden Research Center between 1986 and 1987. In 1987, he became a member technical staff in the Optoelectronics Research Department at Bell Laboratories. He was then hired as an associate professor of physics and the director of the Center of Excellence in Microelectronics and Photonics at Clark Atlanta University in 1994. Williams was promoted to professor of physics in 2013 and became the director of the Center of Excellence in Material Physics in 2014. Williams served as the interim chair of the Clark Atlanta University Department of Physics between 2004 and 2006 as well as between 2018 and 2020. He became the department chair in 2020.

Over the course of his career, Williams published over one hundred scientific articles including Molecular beam studies of H2 and D2 dissociative chemisorption on Pt (111) in 1990 with A.C. Luntz and J.K. Brown, The sticking of O2 on a Pt (111) surface in 1988 with A.C. Luntz and D.S. Bethune, and Electrical study of Schottky barriers on atomically clean GaAs (110) surfaces in 1986 with N. Newman, M. Van Schilfgaarde, T. Kendelwicz, and W.E. Spicer.

Williams became a member of the American Physical Society (APS) in 1980 and in 2002 was appointed as the APS chair of the committee on minorities. Williams joined the American Vacuum Society (AVS) in 1981 and subsequently served in the roles of president, director, and trustee for the AVS. In 2022, he was named as an AVS fellow. Williams became the first African American president of AVS when he was elected to the role in 2023.

Williams and his wife, Felicia Price Williams, reside in Stone Mountain, Atlanta. They have a blended family of five children: Phillip Williams, Jared Williams, Courtney Williams, Reilly Smith and Ryan Smith.

Michael Duryea Williams was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on March 1, 2024.