New Dean
Science Journal, Spring 1999 -- Vol 16, No. 1
Daniel J. Larson, formerly the Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams professor of physics at the University of Virginia, became dean of the Eberly College of Science in September 1998.
In announcing the appointment, John Brighton, then Vice President and Provost, said "Daniel Larson is a leader in physics education at the graduate and undergraduate levels and an accomplished researcher. We are confident that the board will find his skills and capabilities as impressive as the search committee has, and we look forward to his appointment as dean of the College of Science."
Larson's research interests center on experimental atomic and molecular physics. For some time he has focused on using the special characteristics of negative ions to study processes and properties of general importance in atomic, molecular and optical physics. At the University of Virginia, where he was consistently ranked among the best teachers in his department, Larson's cumulative research funding was more than $4 million. He has published dozens of papers in scientific journals and presented many invited papers at scientific meetings.
Larson succeeds two interim deans: Steven M. Weinreb, who served from July to September 1998, and Howard Grotch, who served from June 1997 until July 1998. Weinreb, a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry since 1978 and its head since 1994, continues his research at Penn State as the Russell and Mildred Marker Professor of Natural Products Chemistry. Grotch, who had been a faculty member in the Department of Physics since 1968 and had served as its head since 1988, left Penn State to become dean of arts and sciences at the University of Kentucky.
Larson joined the University of Virginia in 1978 as an associate professor of physics and was chairman of its physics department from 1991 to 1997 and associate dean of its arts and sciences faculty from 1989 to 1991. He also was a National Science Foundation graduate fellow from 1966 to 1970 and a Woodrow Wilson fellow in 1966.
He earned both his doctoral degree (1971) and his master's degree (1967)
in physics at Harvard University.
In 1966 he graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor-of-arts degree in
physics and mathematics from St. Olaf
College.