American theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (2004), Chancellor's Chair Professor at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara. Attended the 2006 Confronting Gravity conference on St. Thomas funded by Jeffrey Epstein, which brought together roughly 20 leading physicists including three Nobel laureates.
Gross was photographed alongside Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne at the event. The conference included visits to Epstein's private island. A March 2026 NPR investigation into the conference reported that Epstein used the gathering to build social capital with prominent scientists.
Gross was also named by the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation as a scientist it supported.