David Gross

School of Theoretical Physics Gen. Director

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

David J. Gross is the Chancellor’s Chair professor of theoretical physics and the former director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in 1966 from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the Kavli Institute, he was the Thomas Jones professor of mathematical physics at Princeton University.

Gross was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczek, “for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction.” His other awards include the Sakurai Prize, a MacArthur fellowship, the Dirac Medal, the Oskar Klein Medal, the Harvey Prize, the High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society, and the Grande Médaille of the French Academy of Sciences. He holds honorary degrees from institutions in the US, Britain, France Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, China, the Philippines and Cambodia. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2018, he became President-Elect of the American Physical Society.

Awards and Honors

  • NSF Graduate Fellowship, 1963-66
  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, 1970-74
  • J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society, 1986
  • MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Prize, 1987
  • Dirac Medal, International Center for Theoretical Physics, 1988
  • Oscar Klein Medal, Royal Swedish Academy, 2000
  • Harvey Prize, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, 2000
  • High Energy and Particle Physics Prize, European Physical Society, 2003
  • Grande Médaille d’Or de l’Académie des Sciences, France, 2004 
  • Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004
  • Golden Plate Award, Academy of Achievement, 2005
  • San Carlos Borromeo Award, University of San Carlos, Philippines, 2008
  • Richard E. Prange Prize, University of Maryland, 2013
  • Medal of Honor of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia 2016