Richard C. Willson holds a doctoral degree in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of California-Los Angeles and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Physics from the University of Colorado. He is a Senior Research Scientist in the employ of Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research. His work in this field, which began at the University of Colorado and continued at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Columbia University, has been in the area of development of state-of-the-art solar irradiance measurement techniques for both total and spectral irradiance. He developed prism, grating, and interference spectroscopy instrumentation for spectral observations in both laboratory and flight environments. He developed the Active Cavity Radiometer instrumentation for total irradiance observations and has conducted flight 15 experiments on balloons, sounding rockets, the Space Shuttle, and satellite platforms. He has served as the Principal Investigator for the Solar Maximum Mission ACRIM I, Space Shuttle Spacelab I and Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science (ATLAS) ACRIM's, Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) ACRIM II and EOS/ACRIM III experiments.