James G. Berryman graduated from the University of Kansas (Lawrence) with a B.A. in Math and B.S. in physics (with Highest Distinction and Honors in Physics) in 1969. He subsequently received his M.S. (1970) in physics and his Ph.D. (1975) degree in condensed matter physics (for quantum mechanical studies of electrical transport in disordered metallic alloys) from the University of Wisconsin (Madison). He worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Mathematics Research Center on the University of Wisconsin campus for one year, studying nonlinear diffusion problems in plasma physics and nonlinear water waves. Then he worked as a Research Geophysicist for Conoco Oil Company, in Ponca City, Oklahoma, which was his first introduction to rock physics, poromechanics, and real world inverse problems via data analysis in reflection seismology. Jim was then a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Researcher at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University from 1977 to 1978, while continuing work on seismic inverse problems, seismic anisotropy, signal analysis, waves in periodic structures, and nonlinear diffusion problems. He subsequently spent three years at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Whippany, New Jersey, as a Member of Technical Staff working on analysis, computations, and field experiments related to ocean acoustics and antisubmarine warfare.

In 1981, he began his (almost) 25 year career with the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, CA, where his final position was as a Physicist in the Computational Physics Group, Atmospheric, Earth, and Energy Sciences Department, Energy and Environment Directorate. For five years in the 1980s he worked in the Electronics Engineering Department at LLNL in various roles related to underground imaging and/or signal and image processing research. In subsequent years, he has held visiting research positions at the Courant Institute (NYU), at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, at the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington in Seattle, and twice at Stanford University (in Mathematics and in Geophysics, respectively). He has also been a Consulting Professor of Geophysics at Stanford since 1992, as well as a frequent visitor and collaborator in the Mathematics Department. In July, 2006, Jim transferred to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where he is now a Senior Staff Scientist, currently serving as Head of the Geophysics Department, Earth Sciences Division. His areas of expertise include: (1) rock physics and poromechanics, (2) the theory of composites and granular materials, and also (3) inverse problems in acoustics, seismology, and electromagnetics, as well as applications in time-reversal-based detection, imaging, and communications. He has over 160 journal publications and 4 patents. He is currently on the editorial boards of two journals, and past board member or Associate Editor of two other journals. For his research in the mechanics of porous materials, Jim received the 2005 Maurice Anthony Biot Medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers on May 25, 2005, in Norman, Oklahoma, at the Third Biot Conference on Poromechanics. He is a member of the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the Acoustical Society of America, and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.