Jonathan S. Wurtele received his B.A. in Physics and Mathematics in 1979, and his Ph.D. in Physics in 1985, both from the University of California, Berkeley. After two years as a postdoc, he joined the MIT Physics Department as an Assistant Professor in 1987. In 1990 he was a Foreign Fellow at the Institute for Space and Astronautical Science in Japan. He returned to Berkeley in 1995.