John Dirk Walecka obtained his PhD in nuclear theory from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958. He was Professor of Physics at Stanford University from 1966 to 1987 and then went on to become Scientific Director of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) from 1986 to 1992. He is now Governor's Distinguished CEBAF Professor of Physics at the College of William and Mary. His research interests cover theoretical nuclear and sub-nuclear physics, in particular nuclear structure, the relativistic nuclear many-body problem, strong-coupling QCD, and electroweak interactions with nuclei. He has published numerous papers on nuclear physics, and in 1996 the American Physical Society recognized his work with the award of the Bonner Prize. He has lectured on electron scattering throughout the United States and Europe.