John D. Joannopoulos

John D. Joannopoulos (April 26, 1947 – August 17, 2025) was an American physicist, focused in condensed matter theory. He was the Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an Elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), an Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S), and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and American Physical Society (APS).

Life and career Joannopoulos was born on April 26, 1947, in New York City to Greek parents. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. Most recently, in 2015, the Optical Society of America (OSA) awarded him the Max Born Award and the APS awarded him the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics, both significant awards.

Joannopoulos was appointed director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies in 2006, and was a Principal Investigator at the Research Laboratory of Electronics.

Joannopoulos had been on the MIT faculty since 1974. He held his BA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, the latter received in 1974. His doctoral studies, advised by Marvin L. Cohen, focused on electronic structure of complex crystalline and amorphous semiconductors. and many other faculty at major universities.