Stephen Davis ’60 Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Davis is the McCormick School Professor and the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University. His work focuses on the area of interfacial dynamics and stability and impacts a variety of fields that seem unrelated but are based on similar mathematical principles. His contributions include improving coatings, such as automobile paint, that protect materials from hostile environments, and developing the process that is used to grow silicon crystals.

The author of more than 200 refereed technical papers, Davis is included on ISIHighlyCited.com, a comprehensive list of pre-eminent individual researchers who have demonstrated great influence in their field as measured by citations to their work.

Davis is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the G.I. Taylor Medal from the Society of Engineering Science in 2001 and the Fluid Dynamics Prize from the American Physical Society in 1994. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and editor of the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics.

Davis earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and his master’s and doctorate in mathematics, all at Rensselaer.