Ray-Sachs-Ivor-Robinson-Art-Komar-and-John-Lighton-Synge-Jablonna-1962-Photo

Ivor Robinson (October 7, 1923 – May 27, 2016) was a British-American

mathematical physicist Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and the developmen ...

, born and educated in England, noted for his important contributions to the theory of relativity. He was a principal organizer of the

Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics Ivor Robinson (October 7, 1923 – May 27, 2016) was a British-American mathematical physicist, born and educated in England, noted for his important contributions to the theory of relativity. He was a principal organizer of the Texas Symposium o ...

Biography

Born in

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

, October 7, 1923, "into a comfortable

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

middle-class family", Ivor Robinson read mathematics at

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

as an undergraduate, where he was influenced by

Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch (or Besikovitch) (russian: link=no, Абра́м Само́йлович Безико́вич; 23 January 1891 – 2 November 1970) was a Russian Empire, Russian mathematician, who worked mainly in England. He was b ...

. He took his B.A. in Mathematics in 1947. His first academic placements were at

University College of Wales , mottoeng = A world without knowledge is no world at all , established = 1872 (as ''The University College of Wales'') , former_names = University of Wales, Aberystwyth , type = Public , endowment = ...

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vor ...

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York. Established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church, the university has been nonsectarian since 1920. Locate ...

and

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

Alfred Schild Alfred Schild (September 7, 1921 – May 24, 1977) was a leading Austrian American physicist, well known for his contributions to the Golden age of general relativity (1960–1975). Biography Schild was born in Istanbul on September 7, 1921. His p ...

was developing a department strong in relativity at Austin, Texas, when a second Texas center for relativity research was proposed.

Lloyd Berkner Lloyd Viel Berkner (February 1, 1905 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – June 4, 1967 in Washington, D.C.) was an American physicist and engineer. He was one of the inventors of the measuring device that since has become standard at ionospheric stations ...

was directing the Southwest Center for Advanced Studies at

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

and brought Ivor Robinson there in 1963 when it was a "windowless cube on the Southern Methodist University campus". Robinson was head of the Mathematics and Mathematical Physics division. "Ivor was charged with the formation of a mathematical physics group concentrating on

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

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

." He brought Istvan Ozsváth and

Wolfgang Rindler Wolfgang Rindler (18 May 1924 – 8 February 2019) was a physicist working in the field of general relativity where he is known for introducing the term "event horizon", Rindler coordinates, and (in collaboration with Roger Penrose) for the use of ...

to the Dallas area as permanent members of the newly formed group, alongside a host of distinguished visitors and temporary appointments. This institution became the

University of Texas at Dallas The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD or UT Dallas) is a public research university in Richardson, Texas. It is one of the largest public universities in the Dallas area and the northernmost institution of the University of Texas system. It wa ...

. According to Rindler, "No one who knew him will forget what a brilliant conversationalist he was, with his sonorous deep voice and ultra-English accent, with his convictions and occasional mischievousness." "Ivor Robinson is a brilliant mathematician who showed us the elegant simplicity of space-time by pointing to its null structure." Robinson retired in 2000, remaining

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...

in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Scientific Contributions

Ivor Robinson contributed extensively to modern developments in the theory of relativity. He is known for his pioneering work on null electromagnetic fields, for his collaboration with Andrzej Trautman on models for spherical gravitational waves, and for the

Bel–Robinson tensor In general relativity and differential geometry, the Bel–Robinson tensor is a tensor defined in the abstract index notation by: :T_=C_C_ ^ _ ^ + \frac\epsilon_^ \epsilon_^_ C_ C_^_^ Alternatively, :T_ = C_C_ ^ _ ^ - \frac g_ C_ C^_^ where C_ is ...

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...

has credited him as an important influence in the development of

twistor theory In theoretical physics, twistor theory was proposed by Roger Penrose in 1967 as a possible path to quantum gravity and has evolved into a branch of theoretical and mathematical physics. Penrose proposed that twistor space should be the basic arena ...

, through his construction of the so-called Robinson congruences.

Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics

Astrophysical sciences Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the hea ...

developed with attention to spectra of celestial sources to ascertain the chemical origin of these sources. The addition of

radio astronomy Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies. The first detection of radio waves from an astronomical object was in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming f ...

extended the range of these spectra and revealed quasi-stellar sources with peculiar spectra.

Maarten Schmidt Maarten Schmidt (28 December 1929 – 17 September 2022) was a Dutch-born American astronomer who first measured the distances of quasars. He was the first astronomer to identify a quasar, and so was pictured on the March cover of ''Time'' mag ...

and

Jesse Greenstein Jesse Leonard Greenstein (October 15, 1909 – October 21, 2002) was an American astronomer. His parents were Maurice G. and Leah Feingold. He earned a Ph.D, with thesis advisor Donald H. Menzel, from Harvard University in 1937, having starte ...

found extreme

red shift In physics, a redshift is an increase in the wavelength, and corresponding decrease in the frequency and photon energy, of electromagnetic radiation (such as light). The opposite change, a decrease in wavelength and simultaneous increase in fr ...

s in their studies, which demanded an explanation. Relativistic astrophysics offered its services as a generator of models such as

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

s and their environs. Robinson, Schücking, and others organized the first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics for December, 1963, in Dallas. Engelbert Schucking (August 1989
The First Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics

Physics Today ''Physics Today'' is the membership magazine of the American Institute of Physics. First published in May 1948, it is issued on a monthly schedule, and is provided to the members of ten physics societies, including the American Physical Society. I ...

The Proceedings were published by

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...

as ''Quasi-stellar Sources and Gravitational Collapse''. "It is now conventional wisdom that quasars are probably powered by

rotating black hole A rotating black hole is a black hole that possesses angular momentum. In particular, it rotates about one of its axes of symmetry. All celestial objects – planets, stars (Sun), galaxies, black holes – spin. Types of black holes There a ...

s, but it was here at Dallas that the black hole concept emerged as a serious astronomical hypothesis." It was also at this Symposium that Roy Kerr presented his two page paper on the mathematics of rotating black holes. Of this S. Chandrasekhar (Nobel laureate, 1983) is quoted as saying "In my entire scientific life, extending over forty-five years, the most shattering experience has been the realization that an exact solution of Einstein's equations of general relativity, discovered by the New Zealand mathematician, Roy Kerr, provides the absolutely exact representation of untold numbers of massive black holes that populate the universe" https://nzmathsoc.org.nz/downloads/profiles/NZMSprofile58_Roy_Kerr.pdf?t=1262766416 The following year, a second Symposium, had ''Quasars and High-energy Astronomy'' as its published proceedings. The series continued with Symposia in alternate years. The sixth Symposium, held in New York in 1972, had its proceedings published by the

New York Academy of Sciences The New York Academy of Sciences (originally the Lyceum of Natural History) was founded in January 1817 as the Lyceum of Natural History. It is the fourth oldest scientific society in the United States. An independent, nonprofit organization wit ...

. The following volumes of the Annals of the Academy are proceedings of the Symposium series: 224, 264, 302, 336, 375, 422, 470, 571, 647, 688, and 759. In 1974 the Symposium was back in Dallas, but then it travelled: Boston, Munich (twice), Baltimore, Austin (twice), Jerusalem, Chicago, Brighton, Berkeley, Paris, Stanford, and many subsequent venues. From the point of view of astrophysics, a rotating black hole corresponds to a

Kerr metric The Kerr metric or Kerr geometry describes the geometry of empty spacetime around a rotating uncharged axially symmetric black hole with a quasispherical event horizon. The Kerr metric is an exact solution of the Einstein field equations of ge ...

. The astronomical picture of a

quasar A quasar is an extremely Luminosity, luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is pronounced , and sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. This emission from a galaxy nucleus is powered by a supermassive black hole with a m ...

involves an

active galactic nucleus An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a compact region at the center of a galaxy that has a much-higher-than-normal luminosity over at least some portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with characteristics indicating that the luminosity is not pr ...

with 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 obj ...

Works

* 1959: (with

Hermann Bondi Sir Hermann Bondi (1 November 1919 – 10 September 2005) was an Austrian-British mathematician and cosmologist. He is best known for developing the steady state model of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold as an alternative to the Big ...

and

Felix Pirani __NOTOC__ Felix Arnold Edward Pirani (2 February 1928 – 31 December 2015) was a British theoretical physicist, and professor at King's College London, specialising in gravitational physics and general relativity. Pirani and Hermann Bondi w ...

) "Gravitational Waves in General Relativity III. Exact Plane Waves", ''Proceedings of the Royal Society A'' 251:519-533 . * 1960: (with Andrzej Trautman) "Spherical Gravitational Waves",

Physical Review Letters ''Physical Review Letters'' (''PRL''), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the ''Journa ...

4:431. * 1961: "Null Electromagnetic Fields",

Journal of Mathematical Physics The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' is a peer-reviewed journal published monthly by the American Institute of Physics devoted to the publication of papers in mathematical physics. The journal was first published bimonthly beginning in Januar ...

2:290,1 * 1962: (with

Peter G. Bergmann Peter Gabriel Bergmann (24 March 1915 – 19 October 2002) was a German-American physicist best known for his work with Albert Einstein on a unified field theory encompassing all physical interactions. He also introduced primary constraint, p ...

and

Engelbert Schücking Engelbert Levin Schücking (May 23, 1926 – January 5, 2015), in English-language works often cited as E. L. Schucking, was a physics professor at New York University in New York City. His research interests were theoretical astrophysics, general ...

) "Asymptotic Properties of a System with Nonzero Total Mass",

Physical Review ''Physical Review'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research as well as scientific and literature reviews on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical S ...

126(3):1227 * 1962: (with Andrzej Trautman) "Some Spherical Gravitational Waves in General Relativity", ''Proceedings of the Royal Society A'' * 1963; (with

) "Generalization of a Theorem by Goldberg and Sachs", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 4:484 * 1964: (with Andrzej Trautman) "Exact Degenerate Solutions of Einstein’s Equations", in ''Relativistic Theories of Gravitation'' edited by

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 ...

Pergamon Press Pergamon Press was an Oxford-based publishing house, founded by Paul Rosbaud and Robert Maxwell, that published scientific and medical books and journals. Originally called Butterworth-Springer, it is now an imprint of Elsevier. History The cor ...

* 1969: (with J.R. Robinson and J.D. Zund) "Degenerate Gravitational Fields with Twisting Rays",

Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics The ''Indiana University Mathematics Journal'' is a journal of mathematics published by Indiana University. Its first volume was published in 1952, under the name ''Journal of Rational Mechanics and Analysis'' and edited by Zachery D. Paden and ...

18(9):881–92 * 1969: (with

and H. Strauss) "The Generalized Reissner-Nordstrom Solution", ''International Journal of Theoretical Physics'' 2(3):243–5 * 1969: (with Joanna R. Robinson) "Vacuum Metrics without Symmetry", ''International Journal of Theoretical Physics'' 2(3):231–42 * 1975: "On Vacuum Metrics of Type (3,1)",

General Relativity and Gravitation A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry. In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED On ...

6(4):423–7 * 1976: (with Jerzy Plebanski) "Left-degenerate Vacuum Metrics", ''Physical Review Letters'' 37(9):493 * 1977: (with Alberto Garcia and Jerzy Plebanski) "Null Strings and Complex Einstein-Maxwell Fields with Cosmological Constant", ''General Relativity and Gravitation'' 8(10):841–54 * 1978: (with Jerzy Plebanski) "Electromagnetic and Gravitational Hertz Potentials", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 19(11):2350–8 * 1982: "Null Congruences and Plebanski-Schild Spaces", in ''Spacetime and Geometry: The Alfred Schild Lectures'',

University of Texas Press The University of Texas Press (or UT Press) is a university press that is part of the University of Texas at Austin. Established in 1950, the Press publishes scholarly books and journals in several areas, including Latin American studies, Texan ...

* 1983: (with Andrzej Trautman) "Conformal Geometry of Flows in N Dimensions", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 24:1425 * 1984: (with Krzysztof Rozga) "Lightlike Contractions on Minkowski Spacetime", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 25(3): 499 to 505 * 1984: (with Krzysztof Rozga) "On Some Family of Congruences of Null Strings", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 25(3): 589 to 96 * 1984: (with Krzysztof Rozga) "Congruence of Null Strings in Complex Spacetimes and Some Cauchy-Kovaleski-type Problems", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 25(6):1941–6 * 1985: (with Istvan Ozsvath and Krzysztof Rozga) "Plane-fronted Gravitational and Electromagnetic Waves in Spaces with Cosmological Constant", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 26(7):1755–61 * 1985: (with Peter A. Hogan) "The Motion of Charged Test Particles in General Relativity",

Foundations of Physics ''Foundations of Physics'' is a monthly journal "devoted to the conceptual bases and fundamental theories of modern physics and cosmology, emphasizing the logical, methodological, and philosophical premises of modern physical theories and procedur ...

15(5): 617–27 * 1985: (with Andrzej Trautman) "Integrable Optical Geometry",

Letters in Mathematical Physics ''Letters in Mathematical Physics'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal in mathematical physics published by Springer Science+Business Media. It publishes letters and longer research articles, occasionally also articles containing topical revie ...

10(2–3) * 1993: (with Edward P. Wilson) "The Generalized Taub-NUT Congruence in Minkowski Spaces",

25(3) * 1993: (with Andrzej Trautman) "The Conformal Geometry of Complex Quadrics and the Fractional-Linear Form of Möbius Transformations", ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' 34(11):5391–5406 * 1997: "On the Bel-Robinson Tensor",

Classical and Quantum Gravity ''Classical and Quantum Gravity'' is a peer-reviewed journal that covers all aspects of gravitational physics and the theory of spacetime. Its scope includes: *Classical general relativity *Applications of relativity *Experimental gravitation ...

14(1A);A331–3 * 1998: (with Paul MacAlevey) "An Invariant of Type N Spaces", ''Classical and Quantum Gravity'' 15(12): 3935,6 * 2000: (with Bogdan Nita) "An Invariant of Null Spinor Fields", ''Classical and Quantum Gravity'' 17(10):2149–52. * 2002: (with P. Downes, P. MacAlevey, and B. Nita) "Approximate Solutions of Type (3,1) and (4)"

International Journal of Modern Physics The ''International Journal of Modern Physics'' is a series of Physics journals published by World Scientific. ''International Journal of Modern Physics A'' The ''International Journal of Modern Physics A'' was established in 1986, and covers s ...

A 17(20): 2733,4

References

and Andrzej Trautman, editors (1987) ''Gravitation and Geometry: A Volume in Honour of Ivor Robinson'', Bibliopolis Edizioni di Filosofia e Scienze, Italy .

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Ivor English Jews American physicists Jewish American scientists American people of English-Jewish descent University of Texas at Dallas faculty Jewish scientists 1923 births 2016 deaths British relativity theorists British expatriates in Germany British emigrants to the United States 21st-century American Jews