Geoffrey Charles Fox (born 7 June 1944) is a British-born American theoretical physicist and computer scientist. As of March 2024, he is a professor in the Computer Science Biocomplexity Institute at the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

. Fox was educated at the Leys School and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

. In 1964, he was the

Senior Wrangler The Senior Frog Wrangler is the top mathematics undergraduate at the University of Cambridge in England, a position which has been described as "the greatest intellectual achievement attainable in Britain." Specifically, it is the person who a ...

at Cambridge, the best performer in the mathematics tripos. In the same year, he played in the annual chess match against Oxford University and was also awarded the

Mayhew Prize The Mayhew Prize is a prize awarded annually by the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge to the student showing the greatest distinction in applied mathematics, primarily for courses offered by DAMTP, but also for some courses offered b ...

for Applied Mathematics. He was awarded a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

theoretical physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

from

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

in 1967. He subsequently worked at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

from 1970 until 1990, at

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

from 1990 to 2000, and

Florida State University Florida State University (FSU) is a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher education in the st ...

from 2000 to 2001. In July of 2001 Fox became a professor at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

. There he was the director of the Digital Science Center and

associate dean Dean is a title employed in academic administrations such as colleges or universities for a person with significant authority over a specific academic unit, over a specific area of concern, or both. In the United States and Canada, deans are usua ...

for research and graduate studies at the School of Informatics and Computing. In 1989, he was elected as a

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of American Physic ...

"...for contributions centered on novel uses of computers; firstly, in the phenomenological comparison of theory and experiment in particle physics, and secondly, in the design and use of parallel computers". He is also a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.. He received the High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC) Achievement Award and the

Ken Kennedy Award The Ken Kennedy Award, established in 2009 by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society in memory of Ken Kennedy, is awarded annually and recognizes substantial contributions to programmability and productivity in compu ...

for foundational contributions to parallel computing in 2019. He was the director of FutureSystems, which was a

cyberinfrastructure United States federal research funders use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualization and other computing a ...

test to enable development of new approaches to scientific computing before it was shut down in December, 2021. He is engaged in various projects to enhance the capabilities of minority serving institutions. Over the years, Fox has supervised the Ph.D. of 75 students and written over 1200 publications in physics and computer science according, including his book ''Parallel Computing Works!''. Fox currently works on applications of computer science in bioinformatics, defense, earthquake and ice-sheet science, particle physics, and chemical informatics. His current research interests are network systems science, high performance computing and clouds, AI for science, deep learning for data analytics and simulation surrogates, and the interface of data engineering and data science with data systems.

Notes

1944 births Living people People from Dunfermline Free software programmers Indiana University faculty Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Computer science educators 2011 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Physical Society Syracuse University faculty Florida State University faculty California Institute of Technology faculty {{UK-scientist-stub