This interview is with Daniel Cox, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy. After 10 years in the Ohio State physics department, he came to Davis in 1997 and retired in 2022.
He taught courses at all levels, notably three of the Honors Undergraduate Physics 9H series, the course on Energy and the Environment, and graduate courses on statistical mechanics and biophysics. He also taught in the interdisciplinary Nature and Culture and Nanoparticles in the Energy, Agriculture, and Technology programs.
His research at Davis focused initially on theory of unusual quantum states associated with magnetic impurities in metals, and evolved to theoretical biological physics of DNA, metalloproteins, protein aggregation in neurodegenerative diseases, and computational Neuroscience. His career led to Sloan and Guggenheim fellowships, and being named an American Physical Society Fellow.
His service was largely focused outside the University, where he was elected Chair of the Division of Biological Physics and for 12 years co-directed the Institute of Complex Adaptive Matter science network which linked over 60 universities and labs worldwide for workshops and exchange grants enhancing knowledge of emergent phenomena in hard, soft, and living matter.
He was interviewed by his longtime friend and colleague Gergely Zimanyi, Professor Emeritus of Physics and Astronomy
