David Gross

This article is about the physicist. For the diplomat, see David A. Gross.

David J. Gross
David Jonathan Gross
Born	February 19, 1941 (1941-02-19) (age 70) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Residence	United States
Nationality	United States
Fields	Physics, String Theory
Institutions	University of California, Santa Barbara Harvard University Princeton University
Alma mater	Hebrew University University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral advisor	Geoffrey Chew
Doctoral students	Frank Wilczek Edward Witten William E. Caswell Rajesh Gopakumar Nikita Nekrasov
Known for	Asymptotic freedom Heterotic string
Notable awards	Dirac Medal (1988) Harvey Prize (2000) Nobel Prize in Physics (2004)

David Jonathan Gross (born February 19, 1941) is an American particle physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. He is currently the director and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Biography

David Gross and his wife in Santa Barbara

Construction works at Kavli Institute

He was born in Washington, D.C. to a Jewish family and raised in the United States. His father was Bertram Myron Gross (1912–1998). Gross received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, in 1962. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 under the supervision of Geoffrey Chew.

He was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University and a Professor at Princeton University until 1997. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1987, the Dirac Medal in 1988 and the Harvey Prize in 2000.

In 1973, Gross, working with his first graduate student, Frank Wilczek, at Princeton University, discovered asymptotic freedom, which holds that the closer quarks are to each other, the less the strong interaction (or color charge) between them; when quarks are in extreme proximity, the nuclear force between them is so weak that they behave almost as free particles. Asymptotic freedom, independently discovered by Politzer, was important for the development of quantum chromodynamics.

Gross, with Jeffrey A. Harvey, Emil Martinec, and Ryan Rohm also formulated the theory of the heterotic string. The four were to be whimsically nicknamed the Princeton String Quartet ^[1]

Gross's hobby is fishing. He once caught a two and three quarters pound bluegill in Florida's Crystal Lake, narrowly missing that state's record.

Honors and awards

• Dirac Medal (1988)
• Harvey Prize (2000)
• Nobel Prize in Physics (2004)

See also

Biography portal

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

References

1. ^ NY Times

• Gross, David; Wilczek, Frank (1973). "Ultraviolet Behavior of Non-Abelian Gauge Theories". Physical Review Letters 30 (26): 1343–1346. Bibcode 1973PhRvL..30.1343G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.30.1343. 
• D. J. Gross and F. Wilczek, “Asymptotically Free Gauge Theories. I”, Phys. Rev. D8 3633 (1973)

External links

• Nobel citation
• ArXiv papers
• Webpage at the Kavli Institute
• Scientific articles of David Gross (SLAC database)
• BBC synopsis on the award
• Interviews

Persondata
Name	Gross, David J.
Alternative names
Short description	American physicist
Date of birth	February 19, 1941
Place of birth	Washington, D.C.
Date of death
Place of death