Barry Barish

Barry Barish is an experimental physicist and a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at Caltech. He became the Principal Investigator of LIGO in 1994 and was LIGO Director from 1997-2005. He created the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which now numbers more than 1,000 members worldwide who carry out the science. Barry led this effort with funding from the NSF National Science Board in 1994, and the construction and commissioning of the LIGO interferometers in Livingston, LA and Hanford, WA in 1997. The Advanced LIGO proposal was developed while Barry was director and he has continued to play a leading role in LIGO and Advanced LIGO. He was president of the American Physical Society in 2011.