Biography

Representative Bill Foster was elected to fill the remaining term of former Speaker Dennis Hastert and sworn in to represent the people of Illinois' 14th Congressional District on March 11, 2008.
 
Before being elected to Congress, Rep. Foster worked as a researcher at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) for 22 years. At Fermilab, Foster started his distinguished career by helping discover the top quark, the heaviest known form of matter. He also led the team that designed and built several scientific facilities and detectors still in use today including the Recycler Ring, a giant particle accelerator.  
 
At 19 years old, Foster started a company out of his basement with his brother Fred. In 1975, they invested $500 and built ETC, Inc., a theater lighting company and turned it into a firm that now manufactures more than half of all the theater lighting equipment in the United States. When he decided to run for a public office in 2007, Foster sold his share in his company to avoid any conflicts of interest.
 
Rep. Foster is especially proud of his family, and is happy to follow in his parents’ footsteps by choosing to be in public service. Bill's children, Billy and Christine, were born and raised in the Fox Valley and attended Batavia High School and Illinois Math and Science Academy, respectively.  Billy is attending law school at Cornell University while Christine recently graduated from Stanford University and is working for a company in California developing educational software.
 
Bill Foster was born October 7, 1955 in Madison, Wisconsin. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1975, and graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D in physics in 1983. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, received the Rossi Prize for Cosmic Ray Physics for the discovery of the neutrino burst from Supernova SN1987a, received the Particle Accelerator Technology Prize from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and was awarded an Energy Conservation award from the U.S. Department of Energy for his invention and application of permanent magnets for Fermilab's accelerator.  He currently resides in Batavia with his wife Aesook.