Eric Poisson (born July 26, 1965) is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

award-winning

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

specializing in the study of

black holes A black hole is a massive, compact astronomical object so dense that its gravity prevents anything from escaping, even light. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will form a black hole. Th ...

. Poisson is a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

at the

University of Guelph The University of Guelph (abbreviated U of G) is a comprehensive Public university, public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College (1874), the MacDonald I ...

as well as an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Waterloo,

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, Canada.

Education

He was born in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...

, and grew up in

Rimouski Rimouski ( ; ) is a city in Quebec, Canada. Rimouski is located in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region, at the mouth of the Rimouski River. It has a population of 48,935 (as of 2021). Rimouski, whose motto is ''Legi patrum fidelis'' (Faithful to ...

and

Quebec City Quebec City is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Quebec. As of July 2021, the city had a population of 549,459, and the Census Metropolitan Area (including surrounding communities) had a populati ...

. He obtained his bachelor of science degree from

Laval University Laval means ''The Valley'' in old French and is the name of: People * House of Laval, a French noble family originating from the town of Laval, Mayenne * Laval (surname) Places Belgium * Laval, a village in the municipality of Sainte-Ode, Luxe ...

in Quebec City, and his Ph.D. at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta (also known as U of A or UAlberta, ) is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

, in

Edmonton Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...

. He received his doctorate in 1991 under the supervision of

Werner Israel Werner Israel, (October 4, 1931 – May 18, 2022) was a theoretical physicist known for his contributions to gravitational theory, and especially to the understanding of black holes. Biography Israel was born in Berlin, Germany in 1931. H ...

Research

Poisson's doctoral dissertation was on the concept of mass inflation (not to be confused with cosmological inflation), which he pioneered with Israel. Prior to the understanding of mass inflation, it was believed that

wormhole A wormhole is a hypothetical structure that connects disparate points in spacetime. It can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both). Wormholes are base ...

s into other

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...

s would be found inside some black holes. Mass inflation closes off these wormholes in realistic black holes. After completing his doctorate, Poisson spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow in Kip Thorne's research group at the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

, in

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial d ...

. During this period, he became interested in the gravitational-wave signatures that black hole systems might produce. Such signatures are crucial for the operation of gravitational-wave detectors such as

LIGO The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Prior to LIG ...

. This work continued for a subsequent year spent with Clifford Will at Washington University in St. Louis. His research now focuses on gravitational self-force, which is the force on a body moving through a gravitational field arising from the mass and energy of the body itself. This self-force is expected to play a crucial role in understanding the motion of a stellar mass black hole orbiting and eventually spiraling into a

supermassive black hole A supermassive black hole (SMBH or sometimes SBH) is the largest type of black hole, with its mass being on the order of hundreds of thousands, or millions to billions, of times the mass of the Sun (). Black holes are a class of astronomical ...

such as those that reside at the centers of galaxies. These astronomical systems will be of special interest to space-based gravitational wave detectors such as

Laser Interferometer Space Antenna The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a planned space probe to detect and measure gravitational waves—tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime—from astronomical sources. LISA will be the first dedicated space-based gravitational-w ...

e when they are built, because they will allow precision measurements of the gravitational field of a black hole for the first time.

Awards and honours

* Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, the highest honor awarded by the Canadian Association of Physicists. (2005) *Elected

Fellow of the American Physical Society The American Physical Society honors members with the designation ''Fellow'' for having made significant accomplishments to the field of physics. The following lists are divided chronologically by the year of designation. * List of fellows of the ...

, for important contributions to the theory of gravitational radiation from compact bodies orbiting black holes, to the theory of back-reaction of the emitted radiation on their motions, and to understanding the implications for gravitational-wave detection. (2008)

Books

* ''A Relativist's Toolkit, The Mathematics of Black-Hole Mechanics'', Cambridge University Press (June 7, 2004). . * ''Gravity: Newtonian, Post-Newtonian, Relativistic'' (with Clifford M. Will), Cambridge University Press (May 31, 2014). .

References

External links

Eric Poisson's webpage
1965 births Living people Canadian physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Scientists from Montreal Université Laval alumni Washington University in St. Louis physicists University of Alberta alumni Academic staff of the University of Guelph {{Physicist-stub