David Gross received his Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966. After three years at Harvard as a Junior Fellow he joined the faculty at Princeton University where he has been a Professor of Physics ever since. Recently, he accepted the Directorship of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, to begin in 1997.

Gross\' work deals mostly with String Theory, which attempts to define the smallest, most fundamental building blocks of matter. His discoveries in this field have greatly influenced the search for a "Unified Theory" - an all-encompassing and definitive explanantion of the basic forces in the Universe, such as gravity, magnetism, and the forces deep within the atomic structure.

His awards include the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Prize, and the Dirac Medal.