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Biography
Prof. David Jonathan Gross
Prof. David Jonathan Gross is a 2004 Nobel
Laureate for Physics, 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 in Santa Barbara and a Member of the Advisory Board of
the International Peace Foundation.
Born in Washington, D.C., David J. Gross received his
undergraduate degree from Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1962 and then
returned to the United States to continue his education at the University of
California, Berkeley, from where he received his Ph.D. in physics in 1966. He
left Berkeley later that year to serve as a junior fellow at Harvard University.
David J. Gross began his professional teaching career at
Princeton University in 1969 and was appointed professor of physics in 1972.
During that same period, between 1970 and 1975, he also became a fellow at the
Sloan Foundation. David J. Gross remained at Princeton until 1996, where he was
named Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics (1986-1995) and Thomas Jones Professor
of Mathematical Physics (1995-1997). In 1997 he was appointed director of the
Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
a position he holds until this day.
Professor Gross has also been a Fellow of the American
Physical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American
Association for the Advancement of Science and a Member of the National Academy
of Sciences. He is the recipient of the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American
Physical Society, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Dirac Medal, the Oscar
Klein Medal and the Harvey Prize of the Technion. He has received various
honorary degrees and was selected to receive France's highest scientific honor,
the Grande Médaille D'Or, for his contributions to the understanding of
fundamental physical reality.
In 2004 David J. Gross, together with
H. David Politzer
and
Frank Wilczek,
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for discoveries regarding the
strong force—the
nuclear force that binds together quarks (the smallest building blocks of
matter) and holds together the nucleus of the atom.
The prizewinning work of David J. Gross and of his first
graduate student Frank Wilczek—with H. David Politzer working
independently—arose from physics experiments with particle accelerators
conducted in the early 1970s to study
quarks and the
force that acts on them. During their research the three scientists observed
that quarks were so tightly bound together that they could not be separated as
individual particles but that the closer quarks approached one another, the
weaker the strong force became. When quarks were brought very close together,
the force was so weak that the quarks acted almost as if they were free
particles not bound together by any force. When the distance between two quarks
increased, however, the force became greater—an effect analogous to the
stretching of a rubber band. This phenomenon became known as
asymptotic freedom,
and it led to a completely new physical theory,
quantum chromodynamics
(QCD), to describe the strong force.
This theory was an important contribution
to the Standard Model, the theory that describes all physics connected with the
electromagnetic force (which acts between charged particles), the weak force
(which is important for the sun's energy production) and the strong force (which
acts between quarks). With the aid of QCD physicists can at last explain why
quarks only behave as free particles at extremely high energies. In the proton
and the neutron they always occur in triplets. QCD has been widely
accepted to be the best understanding of how the universe works and has brought
physics one step closer to fulfilling a grand dream: to formulate a unified
theory comprising gravity as well as a theory for everything.
More recently, Professor Gross has been engaged in research
in
superstring theory
being the co-inventor of a new superstring model.
Topic: The future of science and human development
Schedule:
Wednesday, January 6, 2010:
12:00 Luncheon hosted at the University of Cambodia
14:00 Keynote speech and dialogue at the University of
Cambodia followed by a reception
19:00 Dinner hosted by the University of Cambodia at
Cambodiana Hotel
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