The 2004 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to UC Santa Barbara
Professor David Gross Tuesday, marking the fourth time in six years
that a faculty member of that campus has won the accolade and the
15th time in 10 years that a UC faculty member has won.
Gross, 63, and his colleagues David Politzer and Frank Wilczek,
from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology respectively, won the award. Wilczek was
also a UC Santa Barbara faculty member in the 1980s.
Gross was awarded the highly coveted global mark of excellence
by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science for the work he and his
colleagues did on the theory of Quantum ChromoDynamics which
explains how particles inside the atomic nucleus bind together.
“The discovery was expressed in 1973 in an elegant
mathematical framework that led to a completely new theory, Quantum
ChromoDynamics,” according to a statement from the academy
that handed out the award.
“Gross, Politzer and Wilczek have brought physics one step
closer to fulfilling a grand dream, to formulate a unified theory
comprising gravity as well ““ a unified theory for
everything.”
Gross won many awards prior to the Nobel prize including a
prestigious British award in 2003 and France’s highest
scientific honor in July of this year.
In a statement, UC President Robert Dynes, a fellow physics
scholar, congratulated Gross on his major achievements.
“Professor Gross, an alumnus of the University of
California, has been a superb researcher and teacher throughout his
career, and the awarding of the Nobel in physics (Tuesday)
underscores his significant contributions to the field and his
achievements in the creation of new knowledge,” Dynes said.
“This award underscores, once again, the major contribution
that research universities make to our understanding of the
world.”
Gross joins an elite and growing group of UC-affiliated faculty
and researchers that have received the prize in various fields.
Forty-seven UC faculty members have received the prize since its
inception and 14 have received it in the last 10 years.
Five scholars from UCLA have received the prize since 1960.
Chemistry Professor Emiritus Paul Boyer and Dr. Louis Ignarro, in
the department of molecular and medical pharmacology are the only
living award winners from UCLA.
UCSB’s Dean of Science Martin Moskovits spoke of
Gross’ contributions to his field and the university, in a
press release from the campus.
“Nothing could be more fundamental than the structure of
the nucleus ““ the tiny kernel at the center of every
atom,” Moskovits said.
“David Gross is one of the founders of our current
understanding of the nucleus, the so-called standard model. His
work has impacted the entire field of particle physics for decades
and continues to break new ground. He is one of the great
physicists of the age,” Moskovits continued.