H. Jeff Kimble held the William L Valentine Chair Professorship at the California Institute of Technology until 2021 when he became a Professor Emeritus. His BS degree is from Abilene Christian University. He completed his doctoral degree in 1977 at the University of Rochester.

After spending two years as a staff scientist at the General Motors Research Laboratories, he joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 1979, where he eventually held the Sid Richardson Regents' Chair of Physics before moving to Caltech in 1989.

The general areas of his research activities are quantum information science and the quantum dynamics of open systems, including quantum measurement on various fronts, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and the quantum-classical interface.

Kimble is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Society. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has received several awards, including the inaugural Leonard Mandel Quantum Optics Award, the Max Born Award, the Herbert Walther Award, the Einstein Prize for Laser Physics, the Albert A. Michelson Medal of the Franklin Institute, and the International Award on Quantum Communication.