Chamberlain was born in San Francisco; his father was a prominent radiologist who encouraged his son's scientific interests. His A.B degree is from Dartmouth (1941); following which he entered graduate school at Berkeley. His formal studies were interrupted by World War II, but he joined the Manhattan Project where he worked under Emilio Segre both in Los Alamos and Berkely. In 1946 he resumed graduate work at Chicago under the direction of Enrico Fermi, Segre's mentor. He was awarded his Ph.D. in physics in 1949. In 1948 he accepted a position on the physics faculty at Berkeley; he was promoted to full professor in 1958. His primary scientific accopmlishment at that tiem was the discovery of the antiproton, for which he and Segre were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1959. Chamberlain remained active in his scientific career into the late 1980's, making important discoveries relating to the interactions of antiprotons with hydrogen, deuterium and other elements, and using antiprotons to produce antuneutrons. He pioneered the development and use of polarized proton targets to study the spin dependence of a wide variety of high energy processes, including the scattering of pi-mesons and protons on polarized protons, the determination of the parity of hyperons, and a test of time reversal symmetry in election-proton scattering. He was also active in some of his era's momentous political and social struggles including the California Loyalty Oath Controversy; anti-nuclear proliferation and Vietman war protests; and the Free Speech Movement. As a member of the Berkeley faculty he has always taken a special interest in student affairs, especially minority students. He was instrumental in the organization of Berkeley's Special Opportunity Scholarship Program (S.O.S.), for minority and disadvantaged students.