Ignazio Ciufolini (born 1951) is an

Italia Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

n physicist active in the field of

gravitational physics In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the strong ...

and

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 ...

Biography

Ignazio Ciufolini graduated magna cum laude in 1980 at Sapienza University of Rome, and received a PhD in Physics in 1984 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 ...

. From 1982 to 1988 he worked at University of Texas at Austin as a teaching assistant, lecturer and research associate. He is now an Associate Professor of General Physics at

University of Salento The University of Salento ( it, Università del Salento, called until 2007 ''Università degli Studi di Lecce'') is a university located in Lecce, Italy. It was founded in 1955 by Giuseppe Codacci Pisanelli. The university of Salento commenced act ...

(Italy), tenured since 1999, and a member of Centro Fermi, Rome. He collaborated with John Archibald Wheeler in 1995 to write ''Gravitation and Inertia'', for which they won the PROSE Award for the best professional and scholar book in physics and astronomy. He works mainly in the field of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics, proposing a method to measure the effects of

gravitomagnetism 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 ...

using the data from the laser ranged satellites

LAGEOS LAGEOS, Laser Geodynamics Satellite or Laser Geometric Environmental Observation Survey, are a series of two scientific research satellites designed to provide an orbiting laser ranging benchmark for geodynamical studies of the Earth. Each satel ...

and LAGEOS-2. He was featured on the cover of the September 6, 2007 issue of Nature, dedicated to his review paper on Dragging of Inertial Frames and General Relativity. He is the Principal Investigator for the Italian Space Agency ( ASI) of the Laser Relativity Satellite (

LARES Lares ( , ; archaic , singular ''Lar'') were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been hero-ancestors, guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries, or fruitfulness, or an amalgam of these. Lare ...

) mission, a space mission aimed to improve the accuracy of the measurement of

frame-dragging Frame-dragging is an effect on spacetime, predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, that is due to non-static stationary distributions of mass–energy. A stationary field is one that is in a steady state, but the masses ca ...

. In 2010 he won the

Giuseppe Occhialini Medal and Prize The Institute of Physics awards numerous prizes to acknowledge contributions to physics research, education and applications. It also offers smaller specific subject-group prizes, such as for PhD thesis submissions. Bilateral awards * The Max ...

, jointly awarded by the

Italian Physical Society The (SIF) or Italian Physical Society was founded in 1897 and is a non-profit organization whose aim is to promote, encourage, protect the study and the progress of physics in Italy and in the world. It is associated with the journal series '' Nuo ...

and the

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physic ...

. He has been accused of publishing papers on the scientific pre-print archive arXiv.org under pseudonyms, such as G. Felici, and G. Forst which is a violation of the arXiv terms.

References

External links

CV at LARES-mission.com
20th-century Italian physicists Living people 1951 births Sapienza University of Rome alumni University of Salento faculty University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences alumni {{Italy-physicist-stub