Judah Levine, Ph.D.

Dr. Judah Levine earned a B.A. from Yeshiva College, as well as an M.S. and Ph.D. from New York University. Following his doctoral work, he held the position of NSF/NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University.

Often referred to as “the nation’s timekeeper,” Dr. Levine has been with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) since 1969, and is tasked with maintaining the nation’s official civilian time. He has developed software and computer systems with which he created one of the most accurate systems for keeping time. Dr. Levine made the technology available to a variety of industries where atomic-clock-based time was already in play. He earned a Department of Congress Bronze Medal in 1980 and a Gold Medal in 1983.

Dr. Levine created the Internet Time Service (ITS) for NIST in 1993. Today, all major computer operating systems work with ITS, which is based on NTP. ITS coordinates time on all computers and mobile devices. Dr. Levine’s research interests remain focused on characterizing clocks and coordinating network time.

In addition to his position as Physicist, Dr. Levine is a Fellow of both JILA and the American Physical Society; Professor Adjoint, Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder; Chair, BIPM Committee on GPS and GLONASS Time Transfer Standards; Member of the American Association of Physics Teachers.