Gossard is a professor of Materials and Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
In 1982 he co-discovered the fractional quantum Hall effect.
His research is related to molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).
He has a doctorate in physics from UC Berkeley.
After school, he joined Bell Labs.
He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering and the United States National Academy of Sciences.
It was announced in 2014 that Gossard was named as a recipient of a National Medal of Technology and Innovation.