Katharine B. Gebbie is Director of the Physical Measurement Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Laboratory ensures the Nation’s measurement infrastructure by realizing, disseminating, and internationally coordinating the physical standards of measurement and advancing the frontiers of measurement science.
Dr. Gebbie graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in physics and subsequently earned a B.S. in astronomy and a Ph.D. in physics from University College London. She joined NIST in 1968 as a physicist in the Quantum Physics Division of JILA, a cooperative enterprise between NIST and the University of Colorado in Boulder. There she worked extensively on the physics of the solar and stellar atmospheres.
Before being appointed Director of the newly formed Physical Measurement Laboratory in 2010, she served successively as Chief of the Quantum Physics Division, Acting Director of the Center for Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, and Director of the Physics Laboratory. Dr. Gebbie is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Washington Academy of Sciences. She has received several awards, including the Service to America Career Achievement Award, the Women in Science and Engineering Lifetime Achievement Award, and Department of Commerce Gold Medals.