Bruno Bertotti (24 December 1930 – 20 October 2018) was an Italian physicist, emeritus professor at the
University of Pavia
The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...
. He was one of the last students of physicist
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theory ...
.
Bertotti was well known for his contributions to
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
– particularly the
Bertotti-Robinson electrovacuum, an exact solution of the
Einstein field equation
In the general theory of relativity, the Einstein field equations (EFE; also known as Einstein's equations) relate the geometry of spacetime to the distribution of matter within it.
The equations were published by Einstein in 1915 in the form ...
. He has also obtained a more accurate measurement of the parameter gamma of the
parameterized post-Newtonian formalism
In physics, precisely in the study of the theory of general relativity and many alternatives to it, the post-Newtonian formalism is a calculational tool that expresses Einstein's (nonlinear) equations of gravity in terms of the lowest-order devi ...
, with the
Cassini radioscience experiment. The PPN gamma parameter measures the curvature of space in the
metric theory of gravitation
In general relativity, the metric tensor (in this context often abbreviated to simply the metric) is the fundamental object of study. It may loosely be thought of as a generalization of the gravitational potential of Newtonian gravitation. The me ...
and it is equal to one in
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
.
More recent studies revealed that the measured value of the PPN parameter gamma is affected by
gravitomagnetic
Gravitoelectromagnetism, abbreviated GEM, refers to a set of formal analogies between the equations for electromagnetism and relativistic gravitation; specifically: between Maxwell's field equations and an approximation, valid under certain c ...
effect caused by the orbital motion of Sun around the
barycenter
In astronomy, the barycenter (or barycentre; ) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit. A barycenter is a dynamical point, not a physical object. It is an important conc ...
of the solar system. The gravitomagnetic effect in the
Cassini radioscience experiment was implicitly postulated by Bertotti as having a pure general relativistic origin but its theoretical value has been never tested in the experiment which effectively makes the experimental uncertainty in the measured value of gamma actually larger (by a factor of 10) than that claimed by Bertotti and co-authors in Nature.
Between 1953 and 1956, Bertotti worked as a scholar at the
Dublin Institute for Avanced Studies. Following, Bertotti was a visiting scholar at the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
in Princeton, in 1958-59.
Institute for Advanced Study: A Community of Scholars
/ref> In 2007 he was awarded the Italian Gold Medal for Merit in Science and Culture.
Among the last scholars in relativity from the University of Pavia are Alessandro Spallicci and Alberto Vecchio Alberto Vecchio () is a physicist, professor at University of Birmingham in the School of Physics and Astronomy, and the Director of the Institute of Gravitational Wave Astronomy. He was a contributor in the upgrade of LIGO to Advanced LIGO which re ...
.
References
1930 births
2018 deaths
20th-century Italian physicists
Academic staff of the University of Pavia
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
Scientists from Mantua
{{Italy-physicist-stub
Academics of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies