Walter Massey to Deliver the 131st Commencement Address
Walter Massey—inspiring leader, physicist, chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization, president emeritus of Morehouse College and of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, former director of the National Science Foundation, and former director of Argonne National Laboratory—will deliver the keynote address at Caltech's 131st Annual Commencement Ceremony on June 13, 2025.
"Massey's extraordinary career highlights his dedication to science and technology, science policy, and science communication, all as a means to improve the quality of life and foster creativity and innovation," says President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "He has helped open the doors of opportunity for underserved populations, emphasizing inclusive excellence, access to quality education, mentorship, and the promise of STEM."
Massey was born and raised in the segregated South. His stellar academic performance in high school earned him a full scholarship from the Ford Foundation to attend Morehouse College, where he received his BS in physics. He went on to study condensed matter physics at the Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he obtained his PhD.
Following graduation, Massey conducted postdoctoral research at Argonne National Laboratory before becoming an assistant professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focused on superfluidity in liquid helium and has expanded our understanding of neutron stars and informed strategies for detecting dark matter and developing quantum technologies. One of only four or five Black professors, Massey participated in every Black faculty and student association as part of his commitment to racial equity.
Massey went on to join the faculty of Brown University, where he eventually became dean of the college. He was recruited from Brown to become director of the Argonne National Laboratory and professor of physics at the University of Chicago, which manages Argonne for the Department of Energy. He brought together these two institutions as vice president for research at the University of Chicago.
In 1991, Massey was appointed director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Among his many contributions, he helped convince Congress to invest in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) when the prospects for actual detection of gravitational waves were at best remote. LIGO, the largest and most ambitious project ever funded by NSF, successfully detected cosmic gravitational waves 25 years later. The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Caltech professors Barry C. Barish, the Ronald and Maxine Linde Professor of Physics, Emeritus and Kip S. Thorne (BS '62), the Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics, Emeritus, along with MIT's Rainer Weiss, professor of physics, emeritus for their leadership in this momentous initiative.
In 1993, Massey was appointed provost and vice president for academic affairs for the University of California system and its three national laboratories. Two years later, he returned to Morehouse College as president, where he served until 2007, before becoming president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Throughout his service in these leadership roles, Massey fostered cooperation and collaboration between academia, government, and industry. He helped restore funding and recognition of national labs as visionary scientific research institutions. He also co-founded the Argonne-Chicago Development Corporation (ARCH) to commercialize research from Argonne and the University of Chicago.
Massey has served on the boards of BP, McDonald's, Motorola, the MacArthur Foundation, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and the Smithsonian Institution, among others. He was also the vice president of the American Physical Society, chair of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, chairman of Bank of America, a member of the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, and he co-founded the National Society of Black Physicists. He is the only person to have served as president and chairman of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and chair of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.
For more information about Caltech's 131st Annual Commencement, and Massey's personal and professional accomplishments, visit commencement.caltech.edu.