Edward Witten is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. He is a professor emeritus in the school of natural sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, quantum gravity, supersymmetric quantum field theories, and other areas of mathematical physics. Witten's work has also significantly impacted pure mathematics. In 1990, he became the first physicist to be awarded a Fields Medal by the International Mathematical Union, for his mathematical insights in physics, such as his 1981 proof of the positive energy theorem in general relativity, and his interpretation of the Jones invariants of knots as Feynman integrals. He is considered the practical founder of M-theory.
In the mathematical field of differential geometry, Ricci-flatness is a condition on the curvature of a (pseudo-)Riemannian manifold. Ricci-flat manifolds are a special kind of Einstein manifold. In theoretical physics, Ricci-flat Lorentzian manifolds are of fundamental interest, as they are the solutions of Einstein's field equations in vacuum with vanishing cosmological constant.
Louis Witten is an American theoretical physicist and the father of the physicist Edward Witten.
André Lichnerowicz was a French differential geometer and mathematical physicist. He is considered the founder of modern Poisson geometry.
James W. York Jr. was an American mathematical physicist who contributed to the theory of general relativity. In any physical theory, it is important to understand when solutions to the fundamental field equation exist, and answering this question was a theme of York's scientific work, with Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, of formulating the Einstein field equation as a well-posed system in the sense of the theory of partial differential equations.
Robijn F. Bruinsma is a theoretical physicist and is Professor of Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles and Chair of the Department of Theoretical Physics for the Life Sciences at Leiden University. He is a specialist in the theory of condensed matter.
James A. Isenberg is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon.
Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experimental tools to probe these phenomena.
Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat is a French mathematician and physicist. She has made seminal contributions to the study of Einstein's general theory of relativity, by showing that the Einstein equations can be put into the form of an initial value problem which is well-posed. In 2015, her breakthrough paper was listed by the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity as one of thirteen 'milestone' results in the study of general relativity, across the hundred years in which it had been studied.
Cécile Andrée Paule DeWitt-Morette was a French mathematician and physicist. She founded the Les Houches School of Physics in the French Alps. For this and her publications, she was awarded the American Society of the French Legion of Honour 2007 Medal for Distinguished Achievement. Attendees at the summer school included over twenty students who would go on to be Nobel Prize winners, including Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, Georges Charpak, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who identify the school for assisting in their success.
Vincent Edward Moncrief is an American mathematician and physicist at Yale University. He works in relativity and mathematical physics. Moncrief earned his doctorate in 1972 at the University of Maryland College Park under the supervision of Charles William Misner and worked subsequently at the University of California Berkeley and at the University of Utah. He grew up in Oklahoma City.
Achille Papapetrou was a Greek theoretical physicist, who contributed to the general theory of relativity. He is known for the Mathisson–Papapetrou–Dixon equations, the Majumdar–Papapetrou solution, and the Weyl−Lewis−Papapetrou coordinates of gravity theory.
Antoine Georges is a French physicist. He is a professor at the Collège de France in Paris and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Physics at the Flatiron Institute, New York. In 2023, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
The Italian Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV), founded in 1990 , is a non-profit association whose purpose is that of bringing together members belonging to the Italian scientific community who are interested in the various aspects of general relativity and in gravitation physics.
Ruth Durrer is a professor of Cosmology at the University of Geneva. She works on the cosmic microwave background, brane cosmology and massive gravity.
Nathalie Deruelle is a French physicist specializing in general relativity and known for her research on the two-body problem in general relativity and on cosmological perturbation theory.
Leticia Fernanda Cugliandolo is an Argentine condensed matter physicist known for her research on non-equilibrium thermodynamics, spin glass, and glassy systems. She works in France as a professor of physics at the Sorbonne University.
The Institute of Theoretical Physics (IPhT) is a research institute of the Direction of Fundamental Research (DRF) of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). The Institute is also a joint research unit of the Institute of Physics (INP), a subsidiary of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). It is associated to the Paris-Saclay University. IPhT is situated on the Saclay Plateau South of Paris.
Pierre Binétruy was a French theoretical physicist, known for his research on cosmology, gravitational waves, strong nuclear interactions, and supersymmetry.
