physics

Persis Drell

Persis Drell is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Persis Drell rather than just read about it. In short: Persis Sydney Drell (born 1955) is an American physicist who is the provost emerita and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering, where she is also a professor of materials science and engineering, and a professor of physics. Prior to her appointment as provost, she was dean of the Stanford School of Engineering from 2014 to 2017 and director of the US Department of…

Key takeaways

Persis Drell belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Persis Drell to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Persis Drell from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Persis Sydney Drell (born 1955) is an American physicist who is the provost emerita and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering, where she is also a professor of materials science and engineering, and a professor of physics. Prior to her appointment as provost, she was dean of the Stanford School of Engineering from 2014 to 2017 and director of the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory from 2007 to 2012. In 2025, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Early life and education Drell was born in 1955 in Boston, Massachusetts. The daughter of noted physicist Sidney Drell, Persis moved to Stanford when she was six months old. She earned her bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics in 1977 from Wellesley College. She credits her physics professor, Phyllis Fleming, with her personal interest in the field, and at her encouragement, took several advanced physics courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then earned her Ph.D. in atomic physics in 1983 from the University of California, Berkeley, studying under Eugene Commins.

Career Drell began her career as a postdoctoral research associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a member of the Mark-II collaboration. In 1988, Drell was appointed to the physics faculty at Cornell University and joined the CLEO collaboration working on heavy flavor physics. During her tenure, she was the deputy director of Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies and served as chair of the Synchrotron Radiation Committee. In 2002, Drell joined the faculty at Stanford and was appointed associate director, particle and particle astrophysics (then known as research division) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (then known as the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center), where she oversaw the BaBar experiment. She joined the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Collaboration and participated in the construction of the Large Area Telescope. She became deputy director of the laboratory in 2005 and in 2007, she was named the fourth director of SLAC, succeeding Jonathan M. Dorfan. She stepped down from the lab director position in 2012 to return to full time research and teaching. In September 2014, Drell was named dean of the Stanford School of Engineering, the first woman to serve in that role. In February 2017, Drell became the thirteenth provost of Stanford University. Drell stepped down from the Provost role in October 2023. Drell was a member of Nvidia's board of directors for more than ten years, resigning in 2026.

Recognition Drell is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and a fellow of the American Physical Society and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award.

Personal life Drell is married to accelerator physicist Jim Welch. They met in a chamber group at Cornell University. The couple has three children.

References

External links Oral history interview transcript with Persis Drell on 4 May 2020, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library & Archives Media related to Persis Drell at Wikimedia Commons

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Persis Drell

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Persis Drell claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Persis Drell before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Persis Drell ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Persis Drell

In research: Persis Drell appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Persis Drell in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Persis Drell is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1955 births, 21st-century American physicists, 21st-century American women physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Persis Drell outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Persis Drell in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Persis Drell means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Persis Drell out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Persis Drell in simple terms?

Why does Persis Drell matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Persis Drell?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Persis Drell.