Assistant Chairman
PhD, University of Maryland, 1983
David Taylor was an editor at the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters for six years before joining the faculty at Northwestern in 1989. He is the primary academic administrator for the department and is involved with graduate admissions, graduate student financial support, departmental fund-raising, public relations, the undergraduate curriculum, and service on numerous committees. He has served as a freshman adviser for several years. Taylor is also active in undergraduate education and is especially interested in teaching physics to nonscience majors. In the summer of 1999, he presented a series of popular lectures to the Northwestern Alumni Association on the history of physics and on selected topics from modern physics. He presented another series of lectures to the Alumni in Winter, 2004, on the astrophysical and geological factors which may influence whether or not other intelligent life exists in our galaxy, and in Spring, 2005, he lectured on the life and death of the Sun and other stars.
Dr. Taylor was selected to the 1996-97 Associated Student Government's Faculty Honor Roll, which recognizes teaching excellence.
Away from physics, Dr. Taylor is an admirer of Victorian architecture. He has indulged his interest by placing a large number of photographs of Victorian houses on-line.
