The International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG) is a learned society established in 1971 [1] with the goal to promote research on general relativity (GR) and gravitation. To that end, it encourages communication between relativity researchers, in particular by organizing the triennial international GR conferences, sponsoring the Hyperspace website, and publishing the journal General Relativity and Gravitation . The society also serves as the Affiliated Commission 2 (AC.2) of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.
The society's president is always a prominent gravitational physicist. In the past, the office has been held by Christian Møller (1971–74), Nathan Rosen (1974–77), Peter Bergmann (1977–80), Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat (1980–83), Dennis Sciama (1983–86), Ezra Ted Newman (1986–89), George Ellis (1989–92), Roger Penrose (1992–95), Jürgen Ehlers (1995–98), Werner Israel (1998–2001), Robert Wald (2001–04), Clifford Will (2004–07), Abhay Ashtekar (2007–10), Malcolm A. H. MacCallum (2010–13), Gary Horowitz (2013–16) and Eric Poisson (2016–19).
The current president is Nils Andersson.
The society awards two thesis prizes every three years. One is the Bergmann-Wheeler prize for an outstanding PhD thesis in the broad area of quantum gravity. The other is the Jürgen Ehlers prize for an outstanding PhD thesis in numerical or mathematical relativity. It also awards the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Young Scientist Prize in Gravitational Physics every year.
General relativity (GR), also known as the general theory of relativity (GTR), is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.
Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and is one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity. He continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar. Thorne was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics is an international non-governmental organization whose mission is to assist in the worldwide development of physics, to foster international cooperation in physics, and to help in the application of physics toward solving problems of concern to humanity. It was established in 1922 and the first General Assembly was held in 1923 in Paris.
Nathan Rosen was an American-Israeli physicist noted for his study on the structure of the hydrogen atom and his work with Albert Einstein and Boris Podolsky on entangled wave functions and the EPR paradox. The Einstein–Rosen bridge, later named the wormhole, was a theory of Nathan Rosen.
George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon. FRSSAf, is the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-authored The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time with University of Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking, published in 1973, and is considered one of the world's leading theorists in cosmology. From 1989 to 1992 he served as president of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. He is a past president of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is an A-rated researcher with the NRF.
The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity, and gravitational-wave astronomy. The Institute was founded in 1995 and is located in the Potsdam Science Park in Golm, Potsdam and in Hannover where it is closely related to the Leibniz University Hannover. The Potsdam part of the institute is organized in three research departments, while the Hannover part has two departments. Both parts of the institute host a number of independent research groups.
Roy Patrick Kerr is a New Zealand mathematician who discovered the Kerr geometry, an exact solution to the Einstein field equation of general relativity. His solution models the gravitational field outside an uncharged rotating massive object, including a rotating black hole. His solution to Einstein's equations predicted spinning black holes before they were discovered.
Robert M. Wald is an American theoretical physicist who studies gravitation. His research interests include general relativity, black holes, and quantum gravity. He is also a science communicator and textbook author.
Thanu Padmanabhan is an Indian theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose research spans a wide variety of topics in Gravitation, Structure formation in the universe and Quantum Gravity. He has published nearly 300 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books in these areas. He has made several contributions related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and the interpretation of gravity as an emergent phenomenon. He is currently a Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, (IUCAA) at Pune, India.
Arlie Oswald Petters, MBE is a Belizean-American mathematical physicist, who is the Benjamin Powell Professor of Mathematics and a Professor of Physics and Economics at Duke University. Petters will become the Provost at New York University Abu Dhabi effective September 1, 2020. Petters is a founder of mathematical astronomy, focusing on problems connected to the interplay of gravity and light and employing tools from astrophysics, cosmology, general relativity, high energy physics, differential geometry, singularities, and probability theory. His monograph "Singularity Theory and Gravitational Lensing" developed a mathematical theory of gravitational lensing. Petters was also the dean of academic affairs for Trinity College of Arts and Sciences and associate vice provost for undergraduate education at Duke University (2016-2019).
Rainer Kurt "Ray" Sachs is a German-American mathematical physicist, with interests in general relativistic cosmology and astrophysics, as well as a computational radiation biologist. He is professor emeritus of Mathematics and Physics at the University of California Berkeley and adjunct professor at Tufts Medical School.
Jürgen Ehlers was a German physicist who contributed to the understanding of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. From graduate and postgraduate work in Pascual Jordan's relativity research group at Hamburg University, he held various posts as a lecturer and, later, as a professor before joining the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich as a director. In 1995, he became the founding director of the newly created Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany.
Peter Gabriel Bergmann was a German-American physicist of Jewish origins best known for his work with Albert Einstein on a unified field theory encompassing all physical interactions. He also introduced primary and secondary constraints into mechanics. After obtaining his Ph.D at the German University in Prague in 1936 under the direction of Philipp Frank he went to work with Einstein, as his research assistant, at the Institute for Advanced Study between 1936 and 1941. In 1942, Bergmann published the first textbook on general relativity, Introduction to the Theory of Relativity, with a foreword by Einstein. The second edition of this book was published by Dover Publications in 1976. His other textbooks were:
Pantur Silaban is one of the foremost physicists in Indonesia, especially in the field of theoretical physics. He is also one of the earliest physicists from ASEAN countries who studied Einstein's general relativity theories in depth.
Alessandra Buonanno is a theoretical physicist. She is a director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, and head of the "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" department. She holds a College Park professorship at the University of Maryland, College Park, and honorary professorships at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and the University of Potsdam. She is a leading member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, which observed gravitational waves from a binary black-hole merger in 2015.
The Gravitational Wave International Committee is a panel of gravitational wave detection Laboratory or Observatory directors that promotes cooperation and collaboration between the gravitational wave detector projects and provides direction and advice on the future development of the field. Barry Barish founded the GWIC in 1997 and served as the chair from 1997-2003.
Arthur B. Komar was a theoretical physicist, specializing in general relativity and the search for quantum gravity. Arthur Komar made a significant contribution to physics as an educator, research scientist, and administrator. He had wide interests in numerous other subjects.
Felix Arnold Edward Pirani was a British theoretical physicist specialising in gravitational physics and general relativity. Pirani and Hermann Bondi wrote a series of articles that established the existence of plane wave solutions for gravitational waves based on general relativity.
Norna Robertson is a lead scientist at LIGO at California Institute of Technology, and professor of experimental physics at the University of Glasgow. Her career has focused on experimental research into suspension systems and instrumentation to achieve the detection of gravitational waves.
Beverly K. Berger is an American physicist known for her work on gravitational physics, especially gravitational waves, gravitons, and gravitational singularities. Alongside Berger's more serious physics research, she is also known for noticing that vibrational patterns caused by local ravens were interfering with observations at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory.
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