Jerzy Franciszek Plebański (7 May 1928,
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...
– 24 August 2005,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
) was a Polish
theoretical physicist best known for his extensive research into
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 ...
and
supergravity.
Biography
In 1954, Plebański received his Ph.D. under the direction of
Wojciech Rubinowicz at the
University of Warsaw
The University of Warsaw ( pl, Uniwersytet Warszawski, la, Universitas Varsoviensis) is a public university in Warsaw, Poland. Established in 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country offering 37 different fields of ...
. He then went to work at the newly founded Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw. A specialist in the field of
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 ...
and mathematical physics, his first book with co-author
Leopold Infeld
Leopold Infeld (20 August 1898 – 15 January 1968) was a Polish physicist who worked mainly in Poland and Canada (1938–1950). He was a Rockefeller fellow at Cambridge University (1933–1934) and a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Ea ...
was on the problem of motion in general relativity. He was Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Warsaw from 1958 to 1962.
In 1958 Plebański traveled to the United States, and spent two years there, first as an invited professor 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, and then at
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
in Los Angeles. The year after his return to Poland in 1960, he married Anna Lazarowicz.
From 1962 to 1967 the Plebańskis were in Mexico. In the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
years, Mexico was a neutral country, and their visit was approved by the Polish authorities. Jerzy was invited by
Arturo Rosenblueth to join the physics department of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies
'Centro de Investigaciones y de Estudios Avanzados''of the National Polytechnic Institute—normally referred to by its initials
CINVESTAV
The Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (in Spanish: ''Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional'' or simply as ''CINVESTAV-IPN'') is a Mexican non-governmental ...
—in Mexico City.
Returning to Poland, Plebański was vice-rector of the University of Warsaw from 1969 to 1973.
The Plebańskis emigrated permanently to Mexico in 1973. Jerzy returned to the Center for Research and Advanced Studies, where he remained until his death in 2005. During his stay in Mexico he hosted many Polish physicists and maintained close contacts with the University of Warsaw.
Scientific work
1. Nonlinear electrodynamics and quantization techniques.
2. Relativistic equations of motion:
"fast approximation"
3. Spinor connections
4.
Plebanski tensor
5.
Plebanski action
General relativity and supergravity in all dimensions meet each other at a common assumption:
:''Any configuration space can be coordinatized by gauge fields A^i_a, where the index i is a Lie algebra index and a is a spatial manifold index.'' ...
. All vacuum and self-dual solutions of the Einstein equations satisfy a single equation, called the "Heavenly equation".
Notes
See also
*
Plebanski action
General relativity and supergravity in all dimensions meet each other at a common assumption:
:''Any configuration space can be coordinatized by gauge fields A^i_a, where the index i is a Lie algebra index and a is a spatial manifold index.'' ...
*
Plebanski tensor
*
Contributors to general relativity
This is a partial list of persons who have made ''major'' contributions to the (mainstream) development of general relativity, as acknowledged by standard texts on the subject. Some related lists are mentioned at the bottom of the page.
A
* P ...
References
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External links
Jerzy Franciszek Plebañski Rosinsk from
CINVESTAV
The Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (in Spanish: ''Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional'' or simply as ''CINVESTAV-IPN'') is a Mexican non-governmental ...
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plebanski, Jerzy
1928 births
2005 deaths
Polish relativity theorists
University of Warsaw alumni
Polish emigrants to Mexico