Larry Donnie Gladney (born 1957) is an American experimental particle physicist and cosmologist. He serves as a professor of physics at Yale University and the divisional dean for science in the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences. At Yale, he also served as the inaugural Phyllis A. Wallace Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development from 2019 to 2025. He was previously a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Gladney is an experimentalist researcher focusing on the origins of matter, energy, space, and time. He is the author or co-author of more than 600 peer-reviewed publications. He has been profiled by The HistoryMakers and the National Society of Black Physicists, and is included on Scott W. Williams' website, Physicists of the African Diaspora.
Biography Larry Gladney was born in 1957 in Cleveland, Mississippi. His mother, Annie Lee Gladney, raised him in East St. Louis, Illinois, where he attended primary and secondary school, graduating in 1975 from East St. Louis High School. He earned a B.A. degree in physics from Northwestern University in 1979, an M.S. from Stanford University, and, further, a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford in 1985. From 1985 to 1988, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), where he then joined the faculty. He rose through the ranks, becoming a full professor in 2005 and being named to the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professorship for Faculty Excellence in 2008. He served as chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and chair of the Penn Faculty Senate. He was also the associate dean for natural sciences, and held a secondary appointment as a professor of education in the Graduate School of Education. During his time at Penn, he served as chair of the African-American Resource Center's faculty advisory board and was director and principal investigator of the Penn Science Teacher Institute from 2008 to 2012. He was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Netter Center for Community Partnerships. He was also active in science education outreach in Philadelphia-area schools. In January 2019, Gladney assumed positions as a professor of physics and the inaugural Phyllis A. Wallace Dean of Diversity and Faculty Development within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Yale University. Yale created this dean of diversity position in 2015 after students demonstrated to protest what they described as the inhospitable climate for black students at the university. He became divisional dean of science in the FAS in 2022, succeeding Jeffrey Brock. In that role, he oversees the departments of Astronomy, Chemistry, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Mathematics, Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, and Physics. He also serves on the FAS Steering Committee and the Faculty Resource Committee. In June 2025, his term as diversity dean ended.
Research Larry Gladney specializes in astro-particle physics and cosmology and in experimental particle physics. He has conducted extensive research on the weak interactions of heavy quarks and the nature of dark energy.
Particle physics Gladney's early career focused on experimental high-energy physics. At the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), he developed the third-level tau lepton triggers in 1988, and by 1992 he made the first observation of an exclusive B meson decay in the hadron collider environment. By 2000, he was selected as the American representative to the Computing Coordinating Group for the BaBar collaboration and subsequently headed the Level 3 Trigger effort for the BaBar experiment at the SLAC PEP-II Collider.
Cosmology In 2004, Gladney transitioned to experimental cosmology as a visiting scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with the Supernova/Acceleration Probe simulation group led by Saul Perlmutter. He has since been involved in mission planning for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which aims to measure the expansion history of the universe using multiple methods, including Type Ia supernovae as standard candles for cosmological parameter measurements. He serves on the Board of Directors of the LSST Discovery Alliance.
Service and leadership Gladney has held numerous leadership positions in professional organizations and federal advisory bodies. He was a member of the U.S. Army Science Advisory Board from 1997 to 2002. He served on the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) for the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2001 and again from 2006 to 2009. He has also served on the Director's Review Board of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Experimental Physics Advisory Committee for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and the Program Advisory Committee for LIGO. He additionally served on the NSF Advisory and Review Committee for the Origin and Structure of Matter project and the QuarkNet Advisory Board. Within the American Physical Society (APS), Gladney served as chair of the APS Nominating Committee in 2019, having been elected chair-elect in 2017. He also served as chair of the APS Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public.
Fellowships and honors 1989–1994: Presidential Young Investigator, National Science Foundation 1990: Lilly Teaching Fellowship 1997: Edward A. Bouchet Award, American Physical Society 1997: Martin Luther King Jr. Lecturer Award, Wayne State University Outstanding Community Service Award, Black Graduate Professional Students' Association, University of Pennsylvania Distinguished Fellow, Netter Center for Community Partnerships, University of Pennsylvania 2015: Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society
References
Further reading Feibel, Adelaide (June 29, 2018). "Larry Gladney named FAS dean of diversity and faculty development". Yale Daily News.
