Robert Geroch (born 1 June 1942 in

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...

) is an American

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 experime ...

and professor at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. He has worked prominently 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

mathematical physics 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 developme ...

and has promoted the use of category theory in mathematics and physics. He was the

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

supervisor for

Abhay Ashtekar Abhay Vasant Ashtekar (born 5 July 1949) is an Indian theoretical physicist. He is the Eberly Professor of Physics and the Director of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State University. As the creator of As ...

, Basilis Xanthopoulos and

Gary Horowitz Gary T. Horowitz (born April 14, 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is an American theoretical physicist who works on string theory and quantum gravity. Biography Horowitz studied at Princeton University (Bachelor 1976) and obtained his Ph.D. in 1979 at t ...

. He also proved an important theorem in

spin geometry In mathematics, spin geometry is the area of differential geometry and topology where objects like spin manifolds and Dirac operators, and the various associated index theorems have come to play a fundamental role both in mathematics and in math ...

Education

Geroch obtained his

degree from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1967 under the supervision of

John Archibald Wheeler John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in ...

, with a thesis on ''Singularities in the spacetime of general relativity: their definition, existence, and local characterization''.

Writings

Chapters

*Geroch R.P. (1977) "Asymptotic Structure of Space-Time", p.1--105 in: Esposito F.P., Witten L. (eds) Asymptotic Structure of Space-Time. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2343-3_1 *Horowitz, G.T and Geroch, R.P. (1979) "Global structure of spacetimes", p.212--293. In Hawking S.W. and Israel, W (eds): General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey. Cambridge University Press 1979 (ISBN: 9780521299282)

Articles

*Geroch, R.P. (1966) "Singularities in closed universes," Phys.Rev.Lett. 17 (1966) 445--447. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.17.445 *Geroch, R.P. (1967) "Topology in general relativity," J.Math.Phys. 8, 782--786. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1705276 * *Geroch, R.P. (1970) "Multipole Moments. I. Flat Space" J.Math.Phys. 11, (1970), 1955-1961. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1665348 *Geroch, R.P. (1970) "The Domain of Dependence," J.Math.Phys. 11 (1970) 437--439. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1665157 *Geroch, R.P. (1971) "Space-time structure from a global viewpoint," Rend. Scu. Int. Fis. Enrico Fermi 47: 71-103(1971); in B.K.Sachs, ed. , General Relativity and Cosmology (New York, Academic Press, 1971). *Geroch, R.P. (1971) "A Method for generating solutions of Einstein's equations," J.Math.Phys. 12 (1971) 918--924. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1665681 *Geroch, R.P. (1972) "A Method for generating solutions of Einstein's equations. 2.," J.Math.Phys. 13 (1972) 394--404. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1665990 *Geroch, R.P. (1972), "Einstein algebras," Comm. Math. Phys., 26 (4), 271--275. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01645521 *Geroch, R.P., Kronheimer, E.H., and Penrose, R. (1972) "Ideal points in space-time," Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A327, 545--567. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.1972.0062 *Ashtekar, A. and Geroch, R.P. (1974), "Quantum theory of gravitation", Rept. Prog. Phys., 37, 1211--1256. https://doi.org/10.1088/0034-4885/37/10/001

Books

* * * *

Unpublished notes

*
Course Notes, Problem Sets, and Short Topics
', for Lecture courses at the University of Chicago, primarily in the 1970s. * ''Suggestions For Giving Talks'', Notes on giving scientific talks, 1973. Available at: arXiv:gr-qc/9703019

Notes

External links

Faculty page at the University of Chicago (2016-09-19 version via Internet Archive)Robert Geroch research articles
cited by INSPIRE-HEP
Robert Geroch research articles
cited by

arXiv arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of ...

Living people 21st-century American physicists American relativity theorists Princeton University alumni University of Chicago faculty 1942 births People from Akron, Ohio 20th-century American mathematicians Mathematicians from Ohio Mathematical physicists {{US-physicist-stub