Gary Gibbons

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Gary Gibbons at Harvard University

Gary William Gibbons (born July 1, 1946 in Coulsdon , Surrey ) is a British theoretical physicist .

life and work

Gibbons studied at Cambridge University , where he became a research student under Dennis Sciama in 1969 . When Sciama went to Oxford University , he became a student of Stephen Hawking and received his PhD in 1973 ( Some Aspects of Gravitational Radiation and Gravitational Collapse ). In addition to his research work at the Max Planck Institute in 1976/77, he remained in Cambridge throughout his career and became a full professor in 1997, a member of the Royal Society in 1999 and a Fellow of Trinity College in 2002 . 1986 // 87 he was at the École normal supérieure (and again in 1999) and the observatory in Meudon , 1980 at the University of California, Santa Barbara , 1992 Kramers professor at the University of Utrecht , 2000 Yukawa professor at the University of Kyoto , 1990 at IHES and 2003 visiting professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology .

While Gibbons initially worked on classical general relativity for his doctoral thesis, he later concentrated on the quantum theory of black holes . Together with Malcolm J. Perry , he used Green's thermal functions to show the generality of thermodynamic properties of horizons, including cosmological event horizons. He developed the Euclidean approach to quantum gravity ( Euclidean quantum gravity ) with Stephen Hawking , which allows the thermodynamics of black holes to be derived using the method of a functional integral.

His work in recent years includes contributions to supergravity , p-branes, and M-theory , which are mainly motivated by string theory . Gibbons remains interested in geometrical problems of all kinds that find application in physics.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gibbons, GW, Hawking, SW : Cosmological Event Horizons, Thermodynamics, and Particle Creation . In: Physical Review . D 15, 1977, pp. 2738-2751. doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevD.15.2738 .
  2. ^ Gibbons, GW, Hawking, SW : Action Integrals and Partition Functions in Quantum Gravity . In: Physical Review . D 15, 1977, pp. 2752-2756. doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevD.15.2752 .
  3. ^ Gibbons, GW: Born-Infeld particles and Dirichlet p-branes . In: Nucl. Phys. . B 514, 1998, pp. 603-639. arxiv : hep-th / 9709027 .

Books

  • Editor with Stephen Hawking: Euclidean Quantum Gravity . World Scientific, Singapore 1993, ISBN 981-02-0516-3
  • Editor with EPS Shellard, SJ Rankin: The future of theoretical physics and cosmology. Celebrating Stephen Hawking's 60th birthday , Cambridge University Press 2003 (in it by Gibbons: Euclidean quantum gravity- the view from 2002 )

See also

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gibbons, Gary
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gibbons, Gary William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British theoretical physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Coulsdon , Surrey