Kip Stephen Thorne is an American theoretical physicist known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. Along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish, he was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.
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 closely collaborates with the Leibniz University Hannover. Both the Potsdam and the Hannover parts of the institute are organized in three research departments and host a number of independent research groups.
Clifford Martin Will is a Canadian-born theoretical physicist noted for his contributions to general relativity.
Richard H. Price is an American physicist specializing in general relativity.
Alessandra Buonanno is an Italian-American theoretical physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam. She is the head of the "Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity" department. She holds a research 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.
William Henry Press is an astrophysicist, theoretical physicist, computer scientist, and computational biologist. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1989, he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "in recognition of important theoretical contributions to relativistic astrophysics and to cosmology" Other honors include the 1981 Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy. Press has been a member of the JASON defense advisory group since 1977 and is a past chair.
Barry Clark Barish is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves.
The William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute is a research institute in the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering. FTPI was largely the work of physics Professor Emeritus, Stephen Gasiorowicz and university alumnus and Twin Cities real-estate developer William I. Fine. The institute officially came into existence in January 1987. FTPI faculty consists of six permanent members: Andrey V. Chubukov, Alex Kamenev, Keith Olive, Maxim Pospelov, Mikhail Shifman, and Boris Shklovskii. The institute has on Oversight Committee consisting of ten members. The Oversight Committee is the board of directors that make decisions concerning the staffing and budgeting of the institute.
Maura McLaughlin is currently an astrophysics professor at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. She holds a Bachelor's of Science degree from Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. She is known for her work on furthering the research on gravitational waves and for her dedication to the Pulsar Search Collaboratory. She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2021.
Frans Pretorius is a South African and Canadian physicist, specializing in computer simulations in astrophysics and numerical solutions of Einstein's field equations. He is professor of physics at Princeton University and director of the Princeton Gravity Initiative.
Stuart Louis Shapiro is an American theoretical astrophysicist, who works on numerical relativity with applications in astrophysics, specialising in compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes.
Karan Jani is an Indian astrophysicist working on black holes, gravitational waves, and testing Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. He is currently an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University, and holds the endowed position of Cornelius Vanderbilt Dean’s Faculty Fellow. He has worked at the LIGO Livingston Observatory in the US, the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada. He is a member of the Indian Initiative in Gravitational-wave Observations effort to build a gravitational wave detector LIGO in India.
Susan Marjorie Scott is an Australian mathematical physicist whose work concerns general relativity, gravitational singularities, and black holes. She is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University (ANU).
Peter Reed Saulson is an American physicist and professor at Syracuse University. He is best known as a former spokesperson for the LIGO collaboration serving from 2003 to 2007 and research on gravitational wave detectors.
Nicolás Yunes is an Argentinian theoretical physicist who is a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the founding director of the Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe (ICASU). He is particularly interested in extreme gravity, gravitational waves, and compact binaries.
Rana X. Adhikari is an American experimental physicist. He is a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and an associate faculty member of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (ICTS-TIFR).
Vuk Mandić is a Serbian-American astrophysicist and professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Minnesota. In 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).
Deirdre Marie Shoemaker is an American astrophysicist whose research studies the mergers of binary black holes through both simulation and observation. She is a professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Center for Gravitational Physics and is affiliated with the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.
Richard Alfred Matzner is an American physicist, working mostly in the field of general relativity and cosmology, including numerical relativity, kinetic theory, black hole physics, and gravitational radiation. He is Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Austin where he directed the Center for Relativity. In 1993 he organized and was Lead Principal Investigator of an NSF/ARPA funded computational Grand Challenge program involving ten university teams seeking computational descriptions for the interaction of black holes as potential sources for observable gravitational radiation. His work leading what became known as the Binary Black Hole Grand Challenge Alliance featured in Kip Thorne's Nobel Prize lecture, including when Matzner and Alliance collaborators wagered Thorne that numerical relativity would produce a simulated waveform comparable to observation prior to the first LIGO detection. Matzner and colleagues eventually won, Thorne saying he "conceded the bet with great happiness."
