James C Bergquist received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1970 and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Colorado in 1977. Bergquist has worked at the NIST Boulder Labs since 1978.

He has received numerous honors, including: three Department of Commerce gold medals, the American Physical Society's Herbert P. Broida Prize and Arthur Schawlow Prize in Laser Science, NIST's Edward Uhler Condon Award and Samuel Wesley Stratton Award, OSA's William F. Meggers Award, and the IEEE's I. I. Rabi Award. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2009. He is also a Fellow of OSA