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David J. Gross
David Jonathan Gross
Born	February 19, 1941 (1941-02-19) (age 66) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Residence	United States
Nationality	United States
Field	Physicist
Institutions	University of California, Santa Barbara Harvard University Princeton University
Alma mater	Hebrew University University of California, Berkeley
Academic advisor	Geoffrey Chew
Notable students	Frank Wilczek Edward Witten
Known for	Asymptotic freedom Heterotic string
Notable prizes	Nobel Prize in Physics (2004)

David Jonathan Gross (born February 19, 1941 in Washington, D.C.) is an American particle physicist and string theorist (although he's stated to the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo, on 09/27/2006, that the second area is included in the first one). Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of asymptotic freedom.

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 David 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.

Construction works at Gross's Kavli Institute

He was born and raised in America. His father was Bertram Myron Gross (1912-1998). In his early adolescence his family moved to Israel. He was immersed in Hebrew, a language he had not known, and he became fascinated by physics. He says he was 13 when he decided to become a theoretical physicist.^[1]

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

David Gross and his wife in Santa Barbara

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.^{[citation needed]}

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

1. ^ http://www.nndb.com/people/715/000140295/

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