Prof. Boyd was born in Buffalo, NY. He received the B.S. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Ph.D. degree in physics in 1977 from the University of California at Berkeley. His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by Professor Charles H. Townes and involves the use of nonlinear optical techniques in infrared detection for astronomy. Professor Boyd joined the faculty of the Institute of Optics of the University of Rochester in 1977 and since 1987 has held the position of Professor of Optics. Since July 2001 he has also held the position of the M. Par...