George F. R. Ellis

George F R Ellis
Born	George Francis Rayner Ellis (1939-08-11) 11 August 1939 (age 84) Johannesburg, South Africa
Nationality	South African
Education	Michaelhouse
Alma mater	University of Cape Town St John's College, Cambridge
Known for	Theoretical physical cosmology
Awards	Templeton Prize 2004 Prix Georges Lemaître 2019[1]
Scientific career
Fields	Cosmology
Institutions	University of Cambridge SISSA
Dennis W. Sciama[2]

George Francis Rayner Ellis,

Ellis, an active

Born in 1939 to George Rayner Ellis, a newspaper editor, and Gwendoline Hilda MacRobert Ellis in Johannesburg, George Francis Rayner Ellis attended the University of Cape Town, where he graduated with honours in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics with distinction^{[citation needed]} . He represented the university in fencing, rowing and flying^{[citation needed]} .

While a student at St John's College, Cambridge, where he received a PhD in applied maths and theoretical physics in 1964, he was on college rowing teams^{[citation needed]} .

At Cambridge, Ellis served as a research fellow from 1965 to 1967, was assistant lecturer in the

Ellis became a visiting professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago in 1970, a lecturer at the Cargese Summer School in Corsica in 1971 and the Erice Summer School in Sicily in 1972, and a visiting H3 professor at the University of Hamburg, also in 1972.

The following year, Ellis co-wrote

.

In the following year, Ellis returned to South Africa to accept an appointment as professor of applied mathematics at the University of Cape Town, a position he held until his retirement in 2005.

In 2005 Ellis appeared as a guest speaker at the Nobel Conference in St. Peter, Minnesota.

Work

George Ellis has worked for many decades on

Platonist.^[13]

Publications

Books

• ——; Hawking, S.W. (1973).
  ISBN 978-0-521-20016-5.^[14]
• ——; Dewar, David (1979). Low Income Housing Policy in South Africa. Urban Problems Research Unit,
  UCT
  .
• ——; Williams, Ruth (1988). Flat and Curved Space Times (2000 revised ed.). Oxford University Press.
• —— (1993). Before the Beginning: Cosmology Explained. Bowerdean/Marion Boyars.
• ——; Lanza, A.; Miller, J. (1993). The Renaissance of General Relativity and Cosmology (2005 paperback ed.). Cambridge: University Press.
• —— (1994). Science Research Policy in South Africa. Royal Society of South Africa.
• ——; Murphy, Nancey (1996). On The Moral Nature of the universe: Cosmology, Theology, and Ethics. Fortress Press.
• ——; Wainwright, John, eds. (1997). Dynamical Systems in Cosmology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-521-55457-2
  .
• ——;
  ISBN 978-0-521-56689-6
  .
• ——, ed. (2002). The Far Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective. Templeton Foundation Press.
  ISBN 978-1-890151-90-4
  .
• —— (2004). Science in Faith and Hope: an interaction. Quaker Books.
• —— (2004a). Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity. Cambridge: University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-521-83113-0
  .
• —— (2006). Handbook in Philosophy of Physics.
  ISBN 978-0-444-53002-8
  .
• ——; Maartens, Roy; MacCallum, Malcolm A. H. (2012). Relativistic Cosmology. Cambridge: University Press.
• —— (2016). How Can Physics Underlie the Mind? Top-Down Causation in the Human Context. Springer.

Papers

Ellis has over 500 published articles; including 17 in Nature. Notable papers include:

• —— (1978). "Is the universe expanding?". General Relativity and Gravitation. 9 (2): 87–94.
  S2CID 122166325
  .
• ——; Bruni, M. (1989). "Covariant and gauge-invariant approach to cosmological density fluctuations". Physical Review D. 40 (6): 1804–1818.
  PMID 10012011
  .
• ——; Bruni, Marco; Dunsby, Peter K. S. (1992). "Cosmological perturbations and the physical meaning of gauge-invariant variables". The Astrophysical Journal. 395: 34.
  ISSN 0004-637X
  .
• ——; Coles, Peter (1994). "The case for an open Universe". Nature. 370 (6491): 609–615.
  S2CID 4282835
  .
• ——; van Elst, Henk (1999). "Cosmological models (Cargèse Lectures 1998)". Natoadv.studyinst.ser.c.math.phys.sci. 541: 1–116.
  Bibcode:1999ASIC..541....1E
  .
• ——; Virbhadra, K. S. (2000). "Schwarzschild black hole lensing". Physical Review D. 62 (8): 084003.
  S2CID 15956589
  .
• ——; Virbhadra, K. S. (2002). "Gravitational lensing by naked singularities". Physical Review D. 65 (10): 103004.
  ISSN 0556-2821
  .
• —— (2005). "Physics, complexity and causality". Nature. 435 (7043): 743.
  S2CID 35850757
  .
• —— (2012a). "Top down causation and emergence: some comments on mechanisms". Interface Focus. 2 (2): 126–140.
  PMID 23386967
  .

Honours

In 2019

Grahamstown announced it would award Ellis an honorary doctorate in laws (LLD, hc)^[15]

See also

• List of science and religion scholars

Notes and references

1. ^ "George Ellis awarded Georges Lemaître Prize". UCLouvain. 29 May 2019.
2. ^ George F. R. Ellis at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
3. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1095-50
   .
4. ^ Ellis, George F. R. (22 July 2014). "Physicist George Ellis Knocks Physicists for Knocking Philosophy, Falsification, Free Will". Cross-Check (Interview). Interviewed by John Horgan. Scientific American. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
5. ^ "The Theology of the Anthropic Principle". Counterbalance Foundation. Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. Retrieved 13 October 2021.
6. ISBN 978-0-268-03976-9
   .
7. ^ Merali, Zeeya. "Is the Future Already Written?". Discover. Retrieved 19 November 2023.
8. ^ "Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities". Archived from the original on 24 February 2008. Retrieved 16 May 2007.
9. ^ Ellis 2006, pp. 1183–1285.
10. ^ Ellis, Maartens & MacCallum 2012, pp. 126–140.
11. PMID 33568195
    .
12. PMID 33568166
    .
13. ^ Ellis 2004a, pp. 607–636.
14. ISSN 0002-9904
    .
15. ^ "Rhodes University honours five of Africa's best". grocotts.co.za. 7 March 2019. Retrieved 7 March 2019.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to George F. R. Ellis.

• Partial list of Ellis' published papers
• George Ellis's web page
• Professor George Ellis: a man of many parts, Cape Argus, 18 March 2004
• George Ellis's scientific work as listed at SPIRES^{[permanent dead link]}
• Interview with George Ellis (Recorded June 2004) at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 April 2013) on Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett (transcript)
• George Ellis extended interview with transcript for the 'Why Are We Here?' documentary series.