Andy Albrecht received his BS in 1950 from the University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington, Seattle in 1954. After postdoctoral research with Walter Stockmayer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Andy came to Cornell as an instructor in 1956. In 1957 he was promoted to assistant professor, to associate professor in 1962, and full professor in 1965.
He was a National Science Foundation Science Faculty Fellow, an exchange scientists in the United States-USSR Academy of Sciences program, a fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1986 he received the Polychrome Corporation Award in Photochemistry, in 1988 the Ellis R. Lippincott Medal, and in 1990 the Earle K. Plyler Prize of the American Physical Society. Professor Albrecht served on several editorial boards and committees and was a consultant for Eastman Kodak, American Cyanamid, and IBM. He was the author or co-author of over two hundred papers, and made many seminal theoretical and experimental contributions to linear and nonlinear vibronic spectroscopy.
Andy's intellectual influence is felt not only by those who had the good fortune to work with him directly, but also by generations of scientists working in the area of molecular spectroscopy. He is considered by many to be the father of the theory of resonance Raman spectroscopy.