David Campbell (physicist)

David Kelly Campbell (born July 23, 1944 in Long Beach , California ) is an American theoretical physicist who mainly deals with solid state physics and nonlinear physics.

Campbell studied physics and chemistry at Harvard University (Bachelor 1966) and received his doctorate in 1970 from Cambridge University . He was a post-doc at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1972 to 1974 . From 1974 he was (as an Oppenheimer Fellow) at Los Alamos National Laboratory , where he co-founded and later headed the Center for Nonlinear Studies. In 1992 he became professor of physics at the UIUC, where he was also head of the faculty for a time. In 2000 he became professor of electrical engineering and physics at Boston University , where he is currently also Provost.

Campbell deals with nonlinear phenomena and complex systems, especially in solid state physics, where he investigated localized nonlinear excitations such as solitons , polarons , bipolarons, breather modes, for example in conductive polymers and other novel electronic and magnetic materials. He also studies electron transport in semiconductor superlattices. At the beginning of his career he dealt with nuclear physics (for example pion condensates ). He is the founding editor of Chaos magazine . Campbell is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science . He is currently the Assistant Director of the Scientific Council of the Santa Fe Institute .

In 2010 he received the Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize .

Web links

• Homepage
• Portrait at the Lilienfeld Prize