David Archibald Cox (born September 23, 1948, in Washington, D.C.[1]) is a retired[2] American mathematician, working in algebraic geometry.

Cox graduated from Rice University with a bachelor's degree in 1970 and his Ph.D. in 1975 at Princeton University, under the supervision of Eric Friedlander (Tubular Neighborhoods in the Etale Topology).

[3] From 1974 to 1975, he was assistant professor at Haverford College and at Rutgers University from 1975 to 1979.

He studies, among other things, étale homotopy theory, elliptic surfaces, computer-based algebraic geometry (such as Gröbner basis), Torelli sets and toric varieties, and history of mathematics.

[4] From 1987 to 1988 he was a guest professor at Oklahoma State University.