J. D. Jackson

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J. David Jackson

John David Jackson (born 1925) is a Canadian-American physics professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley and a senior staff physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and is well-known for his publication of the most widely used graduate textbook on electrodynamics.

Jackson attended the University of Western Ontario, receiving a B.Sc. in physics in 1946. He went on to graduate study at MIT, where he worked under Victor Weisskopf. Jackson was awarded his Ph.D. in 1949.

After receiving his doctorate, Jackson stayed on at MIT for six months and then moved on McGill University in 1950. At McGill, Jackson was a member of the mathematics department, rising to the rank of associate professor.

Jackson left McGill in 1957 and joined the physics faculty of the University of Illinois. He stayed there for ten years, until 1967, when he started working at the University of California, Berkeley.

At Berkeley, Jackson held appointments with both the physics department and with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He became a professor emeritus in 1992, but continues his work both at the university and with Lawrence Berkeley.

Jackson is a fellow of the American Physical Society and is an active member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.