Santa Fe Institute

Bio

Director and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics
Professor of Physics, Department of Physics at University of California, Santa Barbara, U.S.A.
2004 Nobel Prize Winner in Physics
David J. Gross received his bachelor's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, in 1962 and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. He then was a Junior Fellow at Harvard University before moving to Princeton University where, in 1973, he was promoted to Professor and later named Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and Thomas Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics. He became the Director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics and holder of the Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1997. Gross has been a central figure in the development of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as the accepted theory of the strong nuclear force. His discovery, with his student Wilczek, of asymptotic freedom led them to the formulation of QCD. Asymptotic freedom is the phenomenon where the force between quarks weakens at short distances, and conversely grows stronger as one tries to separate them, which is why the nucleus of an atom can never be broken into its quark constituents. Gross has also made seminal contributions to Superstring theory. With collaborators, he originated the "Heterotic String Theory", the prime candidate for a unified theory of all the forces of nature. In 2004, Gross was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of asymptotic freedom, along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer.