Robert Geroch | |
---|---|
Born | 1 June 1942 |
Nationality | American |
Known for | Geroch energy Geroch's splitting theorem Geroch group |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics Mathematics |
Institutions | University of Chicago |
Doctoral advisor | John Archibald Wheeler |
Doctoral students | Abhay Ashtekar Gary Horowitz Basilis C. Xanthopoulos |
Robert Geroch (born 1 June 1942 in Akron, Ohio) [1] is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. He has worked prominently on general relativity and mathematical physics and has promoted the use of category theory in mathematics and physics. He was the Ph.D. supervisor for Abhay Ashtekar, Basilis Xanthopoulos and Gary Horowitz. He also proved an important theorem in spin geometry. [2] [3]
Geroch obtained his Ph.D. degree from Princeton University in 1967 under the supervision of John Archibald Wheeler, with a thesis on Singularities in the spacetime of general relativity: their definition, existence, and local characterization. [4]
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, 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 second order partial differential equations.
The following is a timeline of gravitational physics and general relativity.
The Large Scale Structure of Space–Time is a 1973 treatise on the theoretical physics of spacetime by the physicist Stephen Hawking and the mathematician George Ellis. It is intended for specialists in general relativity rather than newcomers.
In theoretical physics, the Einstein–Cartan theory, also known as the Einstein–Cartan–Sciama–Kibble theory, is a classical theory of gravitation, one of several alternatives to general relativity. The theory was first proposed by Élie Cartan in 1922.
Basilis C. Xanthopoulos was a Greek theoretical physicist, well known in the field of general relativity for his contributions to the study of colliding plane waves.
Robert M. Wald is an American theoretical physicist and professor at the University of Chicago. He studies general relativity, black holes, and quantum gravity and has written textbooks on these subjects.
The concept of mass in general relativity (GR) is more subtle to define than the concept of mass in special relativity. In fact, general relativity does not offer a single definition of the term mass, but offers several different definitions that are applicable under different circumstances. Under some circumstances, the mass of a system in general relativity may not even be defined.
The odd number theorem is a theorem in strong gravitational lensing which comes directly from differential topology.
Nathaniel David Mermin is a solid-state physicist at Cornell University best known for the eponymous Hohenberg–Mermin–Wagner theorem, his application of the term "boojum" to superfluidity, his textbook with Neil Ashcroft on solid-state physics, and for contributions to the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information science.
Bruria Kaufman was an American theoretical physicist. She contributed to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, to statistical physics, where she used applied spinor analysis to rederive the result of Lars Onsager on the partition function of the two-dimensional Ising model, and to the study of the Mössbauer effect, on which she collaborated with John von Neumann and Harry Lipkin.
The Taub–NUT metric is an exact solution to Einstein's equations. It may be considered a first attempt in finding the metric of a spinning black hole. It is sometimes also used in homogeneous but anisotropic cosmological models formulated in the framework of general relativity.
The Geroch energy or Geroch mass is one of the possible definitions of mass in general relativity. It can be derived from the Hawking energy, itself a measure of the bending of ingoing and outgoing rays of light that are orthogonal to a 2-sphere surrounding the region of space whose mass is to be defined, by leaving out certain (positive) terms related to the sphere's external and internal curvature.
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.
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.
C.V.Vishveshwara was an Indian scientist and black hole physicist. Specializing in Einstein's General Relativity, he worked extensively on the theory of black holes and made major contributions to this field of research since its very beginning. He is popularly known as the 'black hole man of India'.
In the theory of causal structure on Lorentzian manifolds, Geroch's theorem or Geroch's splitting theorem gives a topological characterization of globally hyperbolic spacetimes.
Ivor Robinson was a British-American mathematical physicist, born and educated in England, noted for his important contributions to the theory of relativity. He was a principal organizer of the Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics.
In physics, non-Hermitian quantum mechanics, describes quantum mechanical systems where Hamiltonians are not Hermitian.
The Meaning of Relativity: Four Lectures Delivered at Princeton University, May 1921 is a book published by Princeton University Press in 1922 that compiled the 1921 Stafford Little Lectures at Princeton University, given by Albert Einstein. The lectures were translated into English by Edwin Plimpton Adams. The lectures and the subsequent book were Einstein's last attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of his theory of relativity and is his only book that provides an accessible overview of the physics and mathematics of general relativity. Einstein explained his goal in the preface of the book's German edition by stating he "wanted to summarize the principal thoughts and mathematical methods of relativity theory" and that his "principal aim was to let the fundamentals in the entire train of thought of the theory emerge clearly". Among other reviews, the lectures were the subject of the 2017 book The Formative Years of Relativity: The History and Meaning of Einstein's Princeton Lectures by Hanoch Gutfreund and Jürgen Renn.