Charles W. Misner

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Charles W. Misner
Born(1932-06-13)June 13, 1932
Jackson, Michigan, U.S.
DiedJuly 24, 2023(2023-07-24) (aged 91)
Alma materUniversity of Notre Dame
Princeton University
Known forGravitation
Mixmaster universe
Misner space
ADM formalism
Wormhole
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship[1]
Heineman Prize (1994)
Albert Einstein Medal
Scientific career
FieldsGeneral relativity
InstitutionsPrinceton University
University of Maryland
Doctoral advisorJohn Wheeler
Arnold Ross
Doctoral studentsCarl H. Brans
Richard A. Isaacson
James A. Isenberg
Richard Matzner
Vincent Moncrief
C. V. Vishveshwara
Signature

Charles W. Misner (/ˈmɪsnər/; June 13, 1932 – July 24, 2023) was an American physicist and one of the authors of Gravitation. His specialties included general relativity and cosmology. His work has also provided early foundations for studies of quantum gravity and numerical relativity.

Biography

Academic training and university positions

Misner received his

Ph.D. in 1957. His dissertation, Outline of Feynman Quantization of General Relativity; Derivation of Field Equations; Vanishing of the Hamiltonian, was completed under John Wheeler
.

Prior to completing his Ph.D., Misner joined the faculty of the Princeton Physics Department with the rank of Instructor (1956–1959), and was subsequently promoted to assistant professor (1959–1963). In 1963 he moved to the University of Maryland, College Park as an associate professor and achieved full professor status there in 1966. Since 2000, Misner has been

Professor Emeritus of Physics, and he continued to be a member of the Gravitation Theory Group in the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics
. During his career, Misner advised 22 Ph.D. students primarily at Princeton and at the University of Maryland.

Misner held visiting positions at the

Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the Pontifical Academy of Cracow (Poland); the Institute for Physical Problems in Moscow (during the time of the Soviet Union); the California Institute of Technology, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge
.

Research

Most of Misner's research fell into the area of

Einstein field equation that is now known as Misner space. Together with Richard Arnowitt and Stanley Deser, he published a Hamiltonian formulation of the Einstein equation that split Einstein's unified spacetime back into separated space and time. This set of equations, known as the ADM formalism, plays a role in some attempts to unify quantum mechanics
with general relativity. It is also the mathematical starting point for most techniques for numerically solving Einstein's equations.

In 2015 the Albert Einstein Society presented the Albert Einstein Medal to Deser and Misner for their work; Arnowitt had died the previous year.[2]

Death

Charles W. Misner died on July 24, 2023, at the age of 91.[3]

Bibliography

  • Misner, Charles W.; Kip S. Thorne; John Archibald Wheeler (September 1973).
    ISBN 0-7167-0344-0
    .
  • Misner, Charles W.; Patrick A. Cooney (1991). Spreadsheet Physics. Reading, MA:
    ISBN 0-201-16410-8
    .

References

  1. ^ Charles W. Misner, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
  2. ^ "South Bristol Physicist Reflects on 50-Year Career". The Lincoln County News. 24 August 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  3. ^ Charles W. Misner, 1932–2023

External links

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