Joseph Reader earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962. The following year, he joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where he has held a number of positions and remains today. He has been a NIST Fellow since 2011.

Reader has received recognition for his work, including OSA’s William F. Meggers Award in 1992 “for his outstanding research on complex atomic spectra and spectra of highly ionized atoms.” He is also a Fellow of OSA and APS.