Arthur Geoffrey Walker

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Arthur Geoffrey Walker (born July 17, 1909 in Watford , Hertfordshire , England , † March 31, 2001 ) was a British mathematician who dealt with differential geometry and made significant contributions to cosmology .

Walker studied at Oxford University from 1931 , most recently under the influence of Edward Arthur Milne . He received his PhD from Edinburgh , where he was examined by Arthur Eddington , and then was a Post-Doc at Imperial College , London. In 1936 he became a lecturer at the University of Liverpool and from 1947 professor at the University of Sheffield . From 1952 he was again a professor in Liverpool, where he retired in 1974.

In 1955 he became a member of the Royal Society , and he was also a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , whose Keith Medal he received in 1950. In 1947 he received the Junior Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society .

Walker was a trained geometer , but he is better known today for his contributions to general relativity . Together with Alexander Friedmann , Georges Lemaître and Howard P. Robertson , he developed the well-known Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric , which is an exact solution of Einstein's field equations of general relativity . Robertson and Walker gave the work of their predecessors at the end of the 1930s (Friedman published in 1922 and 1924, but remained largely unnoticed and died in 1925, Lemaitre rediscovered the solution in 1927, his work was also published in England by Eddington) a strict mathematical basis . With Enrico Fermi , he introduced the concept of the Fermi-Walker transport and the Fermi-Walker derivation.

In 1975 his book Introduction to geometrical cosmology was published , which arose from lectures at the University of Arizona . In 1953 the book Harmonic Spaces appeared with Ruse and Thomas Willmore (who also became a colleague shortly afterwards in Liverpool).

Publications (selection)

  • Relative co-ordinates , Edinburgh: R. Grant and Son, 1932
  • Geometry and the universe , Sheffield, 1948
  • Harmonic spaces , Rome: Edizioni cremonese, 1961
  • Introduction to geometrical cosmology , Tucson: University of Arizona, Department of Mathematics, 1976

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robertson "Kinematics and world structure", Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 82, 1935, pp. 248-301, Vol. 83, 1936, pp. 187-201, pp. 257-271, Walker "On Milne's theory of world- structure, "Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, Vol. 42, 1937, pp. 90-127.
personal data
SURNAME Walker, Arthur Geoffrey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH July 17, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Watford , Hertfordshire , England
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 2001