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 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, Basic Science Lifetime Award (BSLA), Sakurai Prize, MacArthur fellowship, Dirac Medal, Oskar Klein Medal, Harvey Prize, High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society, and the Grande Médaille d'Or 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 2020, he became Past President of the American Physical Society.