William D. Brewer

William D. Brewer was born in Boise, ID/USA in 1943. After a BA in Chemistry/Mathematics at the University of Oregon, he obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry (‘Weak-Interactions Studies by Nuclear Orientation’) at UC Berkeley, working in the group of David A. Shirley. Following postdoctoral work at the Freie Universität Berlin/Germany and the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Orsay/France, he completed his Habilitation at the FU Berlin in 1975 and was University Professor there from 1977 until his retirement in 2008. He has worked in nuclear and solid-state physics by low-temperature nuclear orientation, magnetism on surfaces and in thin films, valence determinations and magnetism by XAS and XMCD with synchrotron radiation. Visiting Scholar at Stanford and IBM Yorktown Heights/USA, KUL Leuven/Belgium, USP and CBPF/Brazil. He has translated over 20 scientific textbooks and monographs (German to English), translates for the Einstein Papers Project (Pasadena/ Jerusalem/Princeton), and is co-author, with AlfredoTiomno Tolmasquim, of the book ‘Jayme Tiomno— A Life for Science, a Life for Brazil ’ (2020) in the Springer Scientific Biographies series, and of 'Kurt Gödel. The Genius of Metamathematics' (2022) in the same series.