David Griffiths (physicist)

David Jeffery Griffiths ( born December 5, 1942 in Washington, DC) is an American theoretical physicist.

Griffiths studied at Harvard University Physics with a bachelor 's degree in 1964, her Master's degree in 1966 and his doctorate in Sidney Coleman 1970 ( Covariant approach to massless field theory in the radiation gauge). As a post - graduate student, he was at the University of Utah and in 1972 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 1974 to 1977 he was Assistant Professor at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and 1977/78 at Trinity College in Hartford (Connecticut). From 1978 he was assistant professor and in 1988 professor at Reed College in Portland (Oregon ). In 2009 he retired.

In 1991 he was a visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and 2007 he was a visiting professor at Stanford University.

He is best known in the U.S. for his college textbooks. For his contributions to physics education, he won the 1997 Robert A. Millikan Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers. As a scientist, he dealt among other things with classical electrodynamics, quantum mechanics and particle physics.

Since 2008 he is Consulting Editor of the American Journal of Physics.

He has been married since 1970 and has a son and a daughter.

Writings

• Introduction to Elementary Particle Physics, Wiley -VCH 2008
• Introduction to Electro Dynamics, Addison -Wesley, 4th edition, Pearson, 2013
• Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, Prentice- Hall, 2nd Edition 2004
• Revolutions in twentieth century physics, Cambridge University Press 2012