Falco earned his Ph.D. at the
University of California, Irvine in 1974 and spent the next eight years at
Argonne National Laboratory before joining the
University of Arizona in 1982 as a Professor of Optical Sciences. In 1989, he received the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Distinguished U.S. Scientist Award, and in 1998 was awarded the UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics. Falco, a Fellow of the
American Physical Society, the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the
Optical Society of America, and the
Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) has published more than 250 scientific manuscripts, most of which are related to physical properties of materials produced by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE), co-edited two books, has seven U.S. patents, and has given more than 250 invited talks on his research at conferences and research institutions in 25 countries. In addition to his scientific research, in 1975 Falco was one of three participants in
Chris Burden's performance art piece '220', and since 1985 his
photography has been represented by the agency PhotoResearchers. In 1998 Falco was co-curator of the
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's
The Art of the Motorcycle, for which he also wrote the exhibition catalog's introductory essay and bibliography. With over 2 million visitors in New York, Chicago, Bilbao, Spain and the
Guggenheim Las Vegas, it was the most successful exhibition of industrial design ever assembled, and one of the most attended museum exhibition of any kind. For this work he received an award from the International Association of Art Critics, along with architect
Frank Gehry, museum director
Thomas Krens, and filmmaker Ultan Guilfoyle. In 1999, Falco was a technical advisor for the
Nam June Paik retrospective at the Guggenheim. In 2000, Falco began collaborating with the British-American artist
David Hockney, resulting in their discovery of scientific evidence in paintings made as early as c.1430 that demonstrated portions of them were created with the aid of optical projections. Hockney's 2001 book
Secret Knowledge resulted in widespread coverage of the "
Hockney-Falco Thesis" in the popular media, including an hour-long
BBC special and a segment on the
CBS show
60 Minutes. In 2008, Falco gave the US
National Art Education Association's 'Ziegfeld Lecture', awarded for his role in this theory, and for its importance for art education. ==References==