Roman Sexl

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Roman Ulrich Sexl (born October 19, 1939 in Vienna ; † July 10, 1986 there ) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and physics didacticist.

Life

His paternal uncle was the physicist Theodor Sexl . Roman Sexl was married to Hannelore Egstain (* 1939), who had a doctorate in physics. She did her doctorate in theoretical physics under Walter Thirring and was a high school teacher in Vienna.

Sexl studied physics and mathematics at the University of Vienna from 1957 , where he received his doctorate in 1961 under Walter Thirring . As a post-doctoral student he was in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study (1962/63). In 1963 he became an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington , 1964 at the University of Maryland and in 1966 Associate Professor at the University of Georgia . In 1967 he completed his habilitation in Vienna, where he became an associate professor for theoretical physics in 1969 and a full professor for general relativity and cosmology in 1971 . In addition, from 1971 to 1975 he headed the Institute for Space Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences .

He has dealt with field theories of gravitation since the 1960s and was a pioneer of quantum field theory in curved spaces with a work with Helmuth Urbantke (* 1940) in 1967 on particle generation from the vacuum in gravitational fields. He became known for his textbooks and popular science books on gravitation and the theory of relativity.

In 1970 he and Peter Aichelburg published his most cited article "On the gravitational field of a massless particle" with more than 400 citations.

In 1977 he developed together with Reza Mansouri (his doctoral student) a test theory of the special relativity theory . The three publications on this were cited more than 200 times.

In 1981 he was President of the International Committee for Physics Education of the IUPAP , of which he had been a member since 1978. In 1980 he received the first Robert Wichard Pohl Prize and in 1971 the Felix Kuschenitz Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. From 1974 he was a member of the International Committee for General Relativity and Gravitation.

Since 1990, the Austrian Physical Society has awarded the Roman Ulrich Sexl Prize annually for special achievements in teaching and teaching , which is endowed with 1,500 euros (as of 2006).

Works

  • Theory of relativity. Überreuter, Vienna 1972.
  • Theory of relativity in the college level. Vieweg, 1973.
  • With I. Raab, E. Streeruwitz: Physics. Volumes 1 to 6, Überreuter, 1976 to 1978.
  • With HK Schmidt: Theory of Relativity. Vieweg school publisher, Düsseldorf 1978.
  • What holds the world together. Physics in search of nature's blueprint. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main and Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-548-34230-2 .
  • Roman and Hannelore Sexl: White dwarfs - black holes. Introduction to relativistic astrophysics. 3rd, exp. Edition, Vieweg, Braunschweig / Wiesbaden 1999 (previously Vieweg Studium; 14, Ed. 2. Basic Physics course, already suitable for high school); ISBN 3-528-17214-2 (3-540-415343). Online (PDF).
  • Roman Sexl, Helmuth K. Urbantke: Relativity, groups, particles. Special theory of relativity as the basis of field and particle physics. Springer, Vienna and New York 1992, ISBN 3-211-82355-7 .
  • Roman Sexl, Herbert Kurt Schmidt: Space - Time - Relativity. Relativistic phenomena in theory and example. Vieweg, Braunschweig and Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-528-37236-2 .
  • Roman Sexl, Helmuth K. Urbantke: Gravitation and cosmology. An introduction to general relativity . Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, Heidelberg and Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-8274-1342-7 .
  • Kurt Baumann, Roman U. Sexl: The interpretations of the quantum theory. 3rd, revised edition, Vieweg, Braunschweig 1987. (Facets of Physics; Volume 11). Critical considerations supplemented with famous original treatises by Max Born , Werner Heisenberg , Albert Einstein , Niels Bohr , Erwin Schrödinger , Wladimir Fock , David Bohm , John Stewart Bell , Bryce DeWitt , ISBN 3-528-28540-0 .
  • Theories of Gravitation. Progress in Physics, Volume 15, 1967, pp. 269-307.
  • With Helmuth Urbantke: Cosmic particle creation processes. Acta Physica Austriaca, Volume 23, 1967, pp. 339-355.
  • Editor with P. Aichelburg: Albert Einstein. His influence on physics, philosophy and politics. Vieweg, 1979.

From 1979 he was editor of the series Facets of Physics at Vieweg.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Aichelburg, Sexl: On the Gravitational field of a massless particle. In: Gen. Relative. Grav. Volume 2, 1971, pp. 303-312.
  2. ↑ Inspire Publication list of Peter Aichelburg ordered by citations.
  3. ^ R. Mansouri, R. Sexl: A test theory of special relativity. Part 1–3. In: Gen. Relative. Grav. Volume 8, 1977, pp. 497-513, pp. 515-524, pp. 809-814.
  4. ^ Roman Ulrich Sexl Prize.
personal data
SURNAME Sexl, Roman
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sexl, Roman Ulrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH July 10, 1986
Place of death Vienna