Philip Wyatt
Philip J. Wyatt received an undergraduate education in liberal arts, physics and mathematics from the University of Chicago and Christ's College in Cambridge, England. He earned a BS degree from the University of Chicago, an MS from the University of Illinois, and his PhD from Florida State University. In 1965, he was nominated by the National Academy of Science as one of fifteen candidates for the United States' first Scientist-Astronaut Selection Program. Alas, he was not selected, thereby thwarting his attempts at becoming a real rocket scientist!
During his career, Dr. Wyatt segued from the world of defense-related work to becoming an industrial physicist. As an idealistic entrepreneur in Santa Barbara, CA, he started an early analytical instrument company called Science Spectrum. Among Science Spectrum’s lasting achievements were its integration of lasers and on-board microprocessors into a laboratory-based instrument that made light scattering measurements of bacterial solutions as well as individual aerosol particles.
In 1982, from the ashes of Science Spectrum's Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in 1981, he founded Wyatt Technology. His son, Geofrey, joined the company in 1983 and his other son, Clifford, came aboard in 1996. Unlike Science Spectrum, Wyatt Technology remained debt and investor-free until its sale in 2023 to Waters Technologies, in Milford, MA. At that time it had grown to more than 250 employees, and had sold its instruments into more than 60 countries.
Dr. Wyatt is a Registered Agent before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and filed Wyatt Technology’s patent applications for most of the company’s history. In 2003, Wyatt was named Graduate of Distinction by the College of Arts and Sciences of the Florida State University. He is the American Physical Society's 2009 recipient of the Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics, as well as the 2022 George E. Pake Prize “...for pioneering accomplishments and entrepreneurial leadership exemplified by successful global commercialization of laser-based light scattering measurements with multiple applications in biotechnology, analytical chemistry, and nanoparticle characterization.”
He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Optical Society of America, and the American Physical Society. He was the Chair (2012-2013) of the American Physical Society's Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics, and the Chair (2018-2019) of its Group on Instrument and Measurement Science. The author of more than seventy publications, Dr. Wyatt has co-authored or contributed to eleven books. He has had over thirty domestic patents issued relating to laser light scattering and other technologies and over sixty derived foreign patents and new filings.