R. Stephen Berry is a James Franck Distinguished Service
Professor Emeritus and member of the Department of Chemistry
faculty at the University of Chicago. He received his BA and
PhD from Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Danish
Academy of Sciences, and has received among various other accolades
the Alfred P. Sloan Fellow (1962-66). Professor Berry's
research explores the topics of structures, properties and dynamics
of clusters and biopolymers, dynamics of few-body systems, and
finite-time thermodynamics.

Joshua Jortner is a Professor Emeritus at the School of
Chemistry at Tel Aviv University. He received his Master of
Science in Physical Chemistry and his PhD from the Hebrew
University in 1960. He is a Fellow of the American Physical
Society and a member of the American Chemical Society, and has
received a myriad of awards and honorary degrees. His
research includes the exploration of the phenomena of energy
acquisition, storage and disposal in isolated molecules, clusters,
condensed phases and biophysical systems.