J. W. Morris Jr., is Professor of Metallurgy, Materials Science and Mineral Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, and in the Structural Materials Program at the Center for Advanced Materials in the Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

He received his B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering (1964) and an ScD in Materials Science (1969) both from MIT. He was employed at the Bell Aerospace Company in Buffalo, New York from 1968-1971 and joined the faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and the staff of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1971