Abhay Vasant Ashtekar (born 5 July 1949) is an Indian theoretical physicist. He is the Eberly Professor of Physics and the Director of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State University. As the creator of Ashtekar variables, he is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity and its subfield

loop quantum cosmology Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is a finite, symmetry-reduced model of loop quantum gravity ( LQG) that predicts a "quantum bridge" between contracting and expanding cosmological branches. The distinguishing feature of LQC is the prominent role play ...

. He has also written a number of descriptions of loop quantum gravity that are accessible to non-physicists. In 1999, Ashtekar and his colleagues were able to calculate the

entropy Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynam ...

for a black hole, matching a legendary 1974 prediction by

Hawking Hawking may refer to: People * Stephen Hawking (1942–2018), English theoretical physicist and cosmologist * Hawking (surname), a family name (including a list of other persons with the name) Film * ''Hawking'' (2004 film), about Stephen Ha ...

. Oxford mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has described Ashtekar's approach to quantum gravity as "The most important of all the attempts at 'quantizing' general relativity." Ashtekar was elected as Member to National Academy of Sciences in May 2016.

Biography

Abhay Ashtekar grew up in several cities, including

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' fin ...

, in the state of Maharashtra, India. After completing his undergraduate education in India, Ashtekar enrolled in the graduate program for gravitation at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

. He went on to complete his PhD at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

under the supervision of Robert Geroch in 1978 and held several appointments at

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, Syracuse before settling at Penn State. He married Christine Clarke in 1986 and the two have a son, Neil Ashtekar.

Religious views

Abhay Ashtekar is an atheist, though he enjoys reading on Indian and other eastern philosophy, namely the

Tao ''Tao'' or ''Dao'' is the natural order of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom, as conceived in the context of East Asian philosophy, East Asian religions, or any other phil ...

and the

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

traditions. Furthermore, he believes to be inspired from the Bhagavad Gita as regards his attitude towards work.

Books

# A. Magnon and A. Ashtekar, Translation from French of Élie Cartan's work, "Sur les variétés à connexion affine et la théorie de la relativité généralisée" with a commentary and foreword by A. Trautman, Bibliopolis, Naples, 1986, 199 pages. # A. Ashtekar, Asymptotic Quantization. Bibliopolis, Naples, 1987, 107 pages. # A. Ashtekar, (with invited contributions) New Perspectives in Canonical Gravity. Bibliopolis, Naples, 1988, 324 pages. # A. Ashtekar and J. Stachel, Editors; Conceptual Problems of Quantum Gravity. Proceedings of the 1988 Osgood Hill Conference (Birkhauser, N. Y., 1991), 602 pages. # A. Ashtekar, Lectures on Non-perturbative Canonical Gravity, (Notes prepared in collaboration with R.S. Tate), (World Scientific Singapore, 1991), 334 pages. # A. Ashtekar, R.C. Cohen, D. Howard, J. Renn, S. Sarkar and A. Shimony (Editors), Revisiting the Foundations of Relativistic Physics, Festschrift in honor of John Stachel, Boston Studies in Philosophy of Science, Volume 234, (Kluwer Academic, 2003).

References

External links

Oral History interview transcript for Abhay Ashtekar on 3 February 2021, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
*

Ashtekar's publication
on

ArXiv arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashtekar, Abhay 20th-century Indian physicists American relativity theorists Loop quantum gravity researchers 1949 births Living people University of Chicago alumni Pennsylvania State University faculty American atheists Indian atheists Indian emigrants to the United States Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences American academics of Indian descent People from Kolhapur Syracuse University faculty Scientists from Maharashtra Indian American mr:अभय अष्टेकर

Biography

Religious views

Books

See also

References

External links