William Samuel Bialek (born 14 August 1960) is a theoretical biophysicist and a professor at Princeton University and The Graduate Center, CUNY.

[1][2] Best known among these is an influential series of studies applying the principles of information theory to the analysis of the neural encoding of information in the nervous system, showing that aspects of brain function can be described as essentially optimal strategies for adapting to the complex dynamics of the world, making the most of the available signals in the face of fundamental physical constraints and limitations.

After postdoctoral appointments at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands and at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, he returned to Berkeley to join the faculty in 1986.

Bialek has made contributions to shaping the education of the next generation of scientists, such as organizing the Princeton Lectures on Biophysics,[4] a series of workshops that provided many young physicists with an introduction to the challenges and opportunities at the interface with biology.

He is currently involved in a major educational experiment at Princeton to create a truly integrated and mathematically sophisticated introduction to the natural sciences for first year college students.