Ronald Kantowski (18 December 1939) is a theoretical cosmologist, well known 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 ...
as the author, together with
Rainer K. Sachs
Rainer Kurt "Ray" Sachs (born June 13, 1932) is a German-American mathematical physicist, with interests in general relativistic cosmology and astrophysics, as well as a computational radiation biologist. He is professor emeritus of Mathematics an ...
, of the
Kantowski–Sachs dust solution
In general relativity, a dust solution is a fluid solution, a type of exact solution of the Einstein field equation, in which the gravitational field is produced entirely by the mass, momentum, and stress density of a perfect fluid that has '' ...
s to 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 ...
. These are a widely used family of
inhomogeneous cosmological models.
Life and career
Kantowski received his Ph.D. in 1966 from 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, 11,075 ...
, where he wrote a dissertation on
cosmological models
Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of f ...
.
He was a research scientist at the South West Center for Advanced Studies during 1967-1968.
He was hired by the Physics & Astronomy department of the University of Oklahoma in 1968, where he became a full professor in 1981.
Besides the Kantowski-Sachs solutions to the Einstein's field equations, Kantowski's second widely recognized contribution to cosmology was developing the now used theory of transparent gravitational lenses. This theory was completed some four years before multiply imaged quasars were detected. There were only four papers written in all at that time.
Kantowski was also among the first to study the distance-redshift relation in inhomogeneous Universe using Swiss cheese universe models.
His recent research has centered on issues of mass inhomogeneities and topological quantum field theories.
Bibliography
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References
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American cosmologists
21st-century American physicists
American relativity theorists
University of Texas at Austin alumni
Living people
University of Oklahoma faculty
Year of birth missing (living people)
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