William C. Dement was born in 1928 in Wenatchee, Washington. He decided on a career in medicine and, as a second-year medical student, was working in Nathaniel Kleitman's sleep research laboratory at the University of Chicago in 1953, when rapid eye movements were discovered. Dement first used the term REM, which is now standard nomenclature in sleep research.
William Dement earned his M.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1955, and his Ph.D. degree in physiology in 1957. In 1963 he established the sleep laboratory at Stanford University, and in 1970 he established the Stanford University Sleep Disorders Clinic. Dement started the publication Sleep Reviews and has written hundreds of scientific papers on sleep and dreaming.
Currently, Dement is professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University Medical School. As director of the sleep laboratory, he is researching the problems that plague millions of people when they sleep. He has contributed significantly to our knowledge of the altered state of consciousness in which we spend a third of our lives.