Stanley Deser (born 1931) is an American

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

known for his contributions to

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 ...

. Currently, he is emeritus Ancell Professor of Physics at

Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , ...

Waltham, Massachusetts Waltham ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, ...

and a senior research associate at

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

Biography

Deser earned his B.A. (Summa cum laude) in 1949 at Brooklyn College in New York, and his master's degree 1950 at Harvard, where he also earned his doctorate in 1953, with a thesis entitled "Relativistic Two Body Interactions". From 1953 to 1955, he was 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 schola ...

Princeton 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 ni ...

. He was at the

Niels Bohr Institute The Niels Bohr Institute (Danish: ''Niels Bohr Institutet'') is a research institute of the University of Copenhagen. The research of the institute spans astronomy, geophysics, nanotechnology, particle physics, quantum mechanics and biophysics ...

from 1955 to 1957, and a lecturer at Harvard from 1957 to 1958. He was an invited professor at the Sorbonne during 1966–1967 and 1971–1972, he held a visiting professorship at

All Souls College All Souls College (official name: College of the Souls of All the Faithful Departed) is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Unique to All Souls, all of its members automatically become fellows (i.e., full members of t ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

in 1977, and a Loeb Lectureship at Harvard in 1975. In the context of

, he developed, with Richard Arnowitt and

Charles Misner Charles W. Misner (; born June 13, 1932) is an American physicist and one of the authors of '' Gravitation''. His specialties include general relativity and cosmology. His work has also provided early foundations for studies of quantum gravity ...

, the ADM formalism, roughly speaking a way of describing

spacetime In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why differ ...

space Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...

evolving in

time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...

, which allows a recasting Einstein's theory in terms of a more general formalism used in physics to describe dynamical systems, namely the

Hamiltonian formalism Hamiltonian mechanics emerged in 1833 as a reformulation of Lagrangian mechanics. Introduced by Sir William Rowan Hamilton, Hamiltonian mechanics replaces (generalized) velocities \dot q^i used in Lagrangian mechanics with (generalized) ''momenta ...

. In the framework of that formalism, there is also a straightforward way to define globally quantities like

energy In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of hea ...

or, equivalently,

mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...

(so-called ADM mass/energy) which, in general relativity, is not trivial at all. With L. Abbott, Deser extended the notion of energy for gravity with a cosmological constant. And with Claudio Teitelboim he showed that

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 ...

has positive energy. Another of Deser's research interests is covariant quantum gravity. Deser applied the new formalism of covariant quantum field theory developed by

Gerard 't Hooft Gerardus (Gerard) 't Hooft (; born July 5, 1946) is a Dutch theoretical physicist and professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics with his thesis advisor Martinus J. G. Veltman "for elucidating th ...

and

Martinus Veltman Martinus Justinus Godefriedus "Tini" Veltman (; 27 June 1931 – 4 January 2021) was a Dutch theoretical physicist. He shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in physics with his former PhD student Gerardus 't Hooft for their work on particle theory. Biogr ...

in the early 1970s. With

Peter van Nieuwenhuizen Peter van Nieuwenhuizen (; born October 26, 1938) is a Dutch physicist. He is now a distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University in the United States. Van Nieuwenhuizen is best known for his discovery of supergravity with Sergio Ferrar ...

he demonstrated the one loop nonrenormalizability of general relativity plus electromagnetism, plus Yang-Mills, plus Dirac fermions, and plus a cosmological constant. The apparent impasse revealed by these efforts was partially overcome in 1976, following a strikingly independent approach from the contemporary work of Daniel Freedman, Sergio Ferrara and

, when Deser and

Bruno Zumino Bruno Zumino (28 April 1923 − 21 June 2014) was an Italian theoretical physicist and faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained his DSc degree from the University of Rome in 1945. He was renowned for his rigorous p ...

demonstrated that a spin 3/2 field can be added to general relativity to produce a consistent, locally supersymmetric theory called

. In 1994, Deser, along with Arnowitt and Misner, received the

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman. As of 20 ...

. Along with Misner he won the 2015 Einstein Medal. He has been a Guggenheim and a Fulbright Fellow, received honorary doctorates from Stockholm University (1978) and the

Chalmers Institute of Technology Chalmers University of Technology ( sv, Chalmers tekniska högskola, often shortened to Chalmers) is a Swedish university located in Gothenburg that conducts research and education in technology and natural sciences at a high international leve ...

(2001), and he is a fellow of both the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

and the

United States National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

. In 2004, a conference in his honor was celebrated in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was made a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2021, one of only about 180 worldwide in all sciences. A conference in honor of Stanley Deser and the ADM collaborators was held in November 2009 at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

on the 50th anniversary of their research.

Personal life

Deser was married to Swedish artist Elsbeth Deser and had three children. His daughter

Clara Deser Clara Deser is an American climate scientist. She is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research where she leads the Climate Analysis Section. Deser was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2021. E ...

is a climate scientist at the

National Center for Atmospheric Research The US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR ) is a US federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) managed by the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and funded by the National Science Foundatio ...

. Deser's autobiography,
Forks in the Road
, was published in September 2021.

References

External links

Deser's homepage at Brandeis
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deser, Stanley 1931 births Living people Brooklyn College alumni Polish emigrants to the United States Harvard University alumni Brandeis University faculty American relativity theorists Quantum gravity physicists Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Physical Society Albert Einstein Medal recipients

Biography

Personal life

See also

References

External links