David J. Gross

Nobel Laureate 2004, Institute Director, 1997 - present
Frederick W. Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics

David Jonathan Gross was born on February 19, 1941 in Washington, D.C. and received his bachelor's degree and master's degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, in 1962.. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 and then was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. In 1969 he went to Princeton where he was appointed Professor of Physics in 1972, and later Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, and Thomas Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics. 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. In 2004 he was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer for this work.

Dr. Gross was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (1970-74), was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1974, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986 and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1987. He is the recipient of the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society in 1986, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Prize in 1987, the Dirac Medal in 1988, the Oscar Klein Medal in 2000 and the Harvey Prize of the Technion in 2000. In 2004 David Gross was selected to receive France's highest scientific honor, the Grande Médaille D'Or, for his contributions to the understanding of fundamental physical reality.

James Hartle

Institute Director 1995 - 1996

James Hartle has been a member of the UCSB physics department since 1966. His scientific work is concerned with the application of Einstein's relativistic theory of gravity --- general relativity --- to realistic astrophysical situations, especially cosmology. He has contributed usefully to the understanding of gravitational waves, relativistic stars, and black holes. He is currently interested in the quantum origin of the universe and the earliest moments of the big bang where the subjects of quantum mechanics, quantum gravity, and cosmology overlap. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a past director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics.

James Langer

Institute Director 1989 - 1994

James S. Langer was born in Pittsburgh in 1934. He received his Ph.D. in mathematical physics under the supervision of R.E. Peierls at the University of Birmingham, England in 1958. He joined the Physics Department at Carnegie Mellon University in 1958. In 1982, he became professor of physics and a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, serving as its director from 1989 to 1995. The 1997 recipient of the APS Oliver E. Buckley Prize, Langer's research generally has been in the theory of nonequilibrium phenomena in condensed matter. His specific areas of interest have been quantum many-body theory of transport in solids, the kinetics of first-order phase transitions including nucleation and spinodal decomposition, dendritic pattern formation in crystal growth and, most recently, the dynamics of earthquakes and fracture.

Langer's most recent national committee service includes stints as chair of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics; chair of the APS Nominating Committee (1995); chair of the Physics Section of the AAAS (1992); and chair of the Panel on Research Opportunities and Needs, Materials Science and Engineering Survey, National Research Council (NRC) (1986-89).

Robert Schrieffer

Nobel Laureate 1972, Institute Director 1984 - 1988

John Robert Schrieffer was born in Oak Park, Illinois on May 31, 1931, and moved to Florida in 1947. Schrieffer attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed graduate studies at the University of Illinois, with Professor John Bardeen. In the third year of graduate studies, he joined Bardeen and Cooper in developing the theory of superconductivity, which constituted his doctoral dissertation.

He spent the academic year 1957-58 as a National Science Foundation fellow at the University of Birmingham and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, where he continued research in superconductivity. Following a year as assistant professor at the University of Chicago, he returned to the University of Illinois in 1959 as a faculty member. In 1962 Schrieffer joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where in 1964 he was appointed Mary Amanda Wood Professor in Physics. In 1980 he was appointed Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and to the position of Chancellor Professor in 1984. He served as Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara from 1984-89. In 1992 he was appointed University Professor at Florida State University and Chief Scientist of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences of which he is a member of their council, the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

His awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, Oliver E. Buckley Solid State Physics Prize, Comstock Prize, National Academy of Science, the John Ericsson Medal, American Society of Swedish Engineers, and in 1984 the National Medal of Science. The main thrust of his recent work has been in the area of high-temperature superconductivity, strongly correlated electrons, and the dynamics of electrons in strong magnetic fields.

Walter Kohn

Nobel Laureate 1998, Founding Institute Director, 1979 - 1983

Walter Kohn is a condensed matter theorist who has made seminal contributions to the understanding of the electronic structure of materials. He played the leading role in the development of the density functional theory, which has revolutionized scientists' approach to the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solid materials in physics, chemistry and materials science. With the advent of supercomputers, density functional theory has become an essential tool for electronic materials science. Professor Kohn has also made major contributions to the physics of semiconductors, superconductivity, surface physics and catalysis. Professor Kohn was the founding director of the National Science Foundation's Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Now called the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, it brings together leading scientists from throughout the world to work on major problems in theoretical physics and related fields. Under Professor Kohn's leadership it quickly developed into one of the leading research centers in physics, and has been widely copied.