John C. H. Spence is Regents' Professor of Physics at Arizona State University with a joint appointment at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. He completed a PhD in Physics at Melbourne University in Australia, followed by postdoctoral work in Materials Science at Oxford University, UK. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Institute of Physics, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of Churchill College Cambridge, UK. He is a recent co-editor of Acta Crystallographica and served on the editorial board of Reports on Progress in Physics. He has served on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Molecular Foundry and the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the DOE's BESAC committee. He has been awarded the Burton Medal and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Microscopy Society of America, and the Buerger Medal of the American Crystallographic Association.