David J. Wales

David John Wales (born 1963) FRS FRSC is a Professor of Chemical Physics, in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge.

Wales was educated at Newport Free Grammar School followed by the University of Cambridge where he was awarded an open scholarship to study at

Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985. He went on to complete a PhD on cluster chemistry, awarded in 1988 for research supervised by Anthony J. Stone. In 2004 he was awarded a Doctor of Science (ScD) degree from Cambridge.

During 1989, Wales as an English-Speaking Union Lindemann Trust Fellow at the University of Chicago, doing postdoctoral research supervised by R. Stephen Berry. He returned to a research fellowship at Downing College, Cambridge in 1990, was a Lloyd's of London Tercentenary Fellow in 1991, and a Royal Society University Research Fellow (URF) from 1991 to 1998. He was appointed a Lecturer in Cambridge in 1998.

Wales research investigates energy landscapes, with applications to chemical biology, spectroscopy, clusters, solids and surfaces. Wales is the author of the textbook Energy Landscapes: Applications to Clusters, Biomolecules and Glasses and a co-author of Introduction to Cluster Chemistry with Michael Mingos.

His research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Wales was awarded the Meldola Medal and Prize in 1992 and the Tilden Prize in 2015, both by the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was a Baker Lecturer at Cornell University in 2005, and the Inaugural Henry Frank Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh in 2007. Wales was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016 and is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.