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David S. Saxon (February 8, 1920 – December 8, 2005) was an American physicist and educator who served as the President of the University of California as well as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the MIT Corporation, the governing board of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Saxon was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended MIT where he earned a B.S. degree in 1941 and Ph.D. in 1944, both in Physics. He worked in MIT's famed wartime Radiation Laboratory during World War II.

Saxon joined the University of California, Los Angeles in 1947, but was dismissed in 1950 with thirty other faculty members because of their objection to signing an oath of loyalty and declaration that they were not Communist Party members. The California Supreme Court later invalidated this requirement and Saxon returned to UCLA in 1952. While at UCLA, Saxon was a dean, vice chancellor, and executive vice chancellor. He served as the president of University of California between 1975 and 1983.

Saxon joined the board of the MIT Corporation in 1977 and held the office of Chairman between 1983 and 1990.

Saxon was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society, American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Woods-Saxon potential in nuclear physics is named partly after him.

Saxon was married to his wife, Shirley, for 65 years and had six daughters and six grandchildren.

Books

• David S. Saxon (2012) . Elementary quantum mechanics. Dover publications. ISBN 978-0486485966.

Notes

1. ^ The Associated Press (December 10, 2005). "David Saxon, 85, University President and Victim of Red Scare, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
2. Gardner, David P. (1967). The California Oath Controversy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. p. 266. hdl:2027/mdp.39015014198496.

References

• Woo, Elaine (December 9, 2005). "David S. Saxon, 85; Physicist Forced Out in McCarthy Era Later Led UC System in a Time of Tight Budgets". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 1, 2018.
• "UC President Emeritus David Saxon Dies at 85". 2005-12-08. Archived from the original on 2007-01-06. Retrieved 2007-02-11.
• "Former Corporation chair David Saxon dies at 85". 2005-12-12. Retrieved 2007-02-11.
• "UCLA Department of Physics & Astronomy Faculty". Archived from the original on 2006-09-02.

External links

• David S. Saxon at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• David Saxon Lectures at UCLA Archived 2018-07-22 at the Wayback Machine
• Works by David S. Saxon at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about David S. Saxon at the Internet Archive
• Photographs of David Saxon from the UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections

• 1920 births
• 2005 deaths
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni
• University of California regents
• Presidents of the University of California System
• Scientists from Saint Paul, Minnesota
• University of California, Los Angeles faculty
• People from Cheltenham, Pennsylvania
• Members of the American Philosophical Society
• 20th-century American academics