Bill joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976, retiring after 34 years. He started in basic and applied research and then moved into line, project, and institutional management, including systems-based improvement in environment, safety, and health, quality, strategic planning, community relations, educational outreach, economic development, and Laboratory-wide organizational performance.
Bill twice took leaves from the Laboratory, once to teach at Williams College and once to serve as Vice President for Inorganic Sciences at BioDesign, a Caltech spinoff company, developing visualization and analysis software for protein engineering and interactive drug design.
Bill serves as board chair of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Foundation, which he helped found in 1997. He served on the Los Alamos Commerce and Development Corporation board from 1999 to 2026. Bill served on the board of Quality New Mexico for many years between 1993 and 2025, when it merged with Rocky Mountain Performance Excellence where he served on the board for one year. Bill also serves on the Advisory Council for Cognia New Mexico. In 2011 he co-founded New Mexico Excellence in Learning, a statewide education effort to promote systems-based continuous improvement, leading it for 15 years.
Bill received an AB in chemistry and mathematics from Williams College and a PhD in chemistry from Caltech. In 1984, he was recognized by Science Digest as one of America’s 100 Brightest Scientists under 40. In 2024 Bill received the Community Relations Medal from LANL and was named a Los Alamos Living Treasure. In 2026, he was named the Garrett Thornburg Philanthropist of the Year.