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.