Jerzy Franciszek Plebański (7 May 1928,

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

– 24 August 2005,

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

) was a Polish

theoretical physicist Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain, and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experi ...

best known for his extensive research into

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

and

supergravity In theoretical physics, supergravity (supergravity theory; SUGRA for short) is a modern field theory that combines the principles of supersymmetry and general relativity; this is in contrast to non-gravitational supersymmetric theories such as ...

Biography

In 1954, Plebański received his Ph.D. under the direction of

Wojciech Rubinowicz Wojciech Sylwester Piotr Rubinowicz (February 22, 1889 – October 13, 1974) was a Polish theoretical physicist who made contributions in quantum mechanics, mathematical physics, and the theory of radiation. He is known for the Maggie-Rubinowicz ...

at the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...

. He then went to work at the newly founded Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw. A specialist in the field of

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 Second Polish Republic, Poland and Canada (1938–1950). He was a Rockefeller family, Rockefeller fellow at University of Cambridge, Cambridge Univers ...

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) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

in Princeton, and then at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

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 was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

years, Mexico was a neutral country, and their visit was approved by the Polish authorities. Jerzy was invited by

Arturo Rosenblueth Arturo Rosenblueth Stearns (October 2, 1900 Chihuahua – September 20, 1970 Mexico City) was a Mexican researcher, physician and physiologist, who is known as one of the pioneers of cybernetics. Biography Rosenblueth was born in 1900 in Ciu ...

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-government ...

—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

References

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External links

Jerzy Franciszek Plebañski Rosinsk
from

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Plebanski, Jerzy 1928 births 2005 deaths Polish relativity theorists University of Warsaw alumni Polish emigrants to Mexico

Biography

Scientific work

Notes

See also

References

External links