Peter Gabriel Bergmann (24 March 1915 – 19 October 2002
) was a
German-American
German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...
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 ...
best known for his work with
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
on a
unified field theory encompassing all physical interactions. He also introduced
primary and secondary constraints into mechanics.
Early life and education
Bergmann was born into a
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 ...
family of
Max Bergmann, a biochemistry professor and
Emmy Bergmann, a pediatrician in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
. His father would later be a professor of chemistry at the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classi ...
.
He began college in 1931, at the age of 16, at ''Technische Hochschule'' (now
TU Dresden
TU Dresden (for german: Technische Universität Dresden, abbreviated as TUD and often wrongly translated as "Dresden University of Technology") is a public research university, the largest institute of higher education in the city of Dresden, th ...
) under the mentorship of
Harry Dember
Harry may refer to:
TV shows
* ''Harry'' (American TV series), a 1987 American comedy series starring Alan Arkin
* ''Harry'' (British TV series), a 1993 BBC drama that ran for two seasons
* ''Harry'' (talk show), a 2016 American daytime talk show ...
. Bergmann obtained his PhD at the age of 21 from the
German University in Prague in 1936 under the direction of
Philipp Frank.
Bergmann's family scattered all over the world during
Nazi rule; his sister Clara stayed behind and ultimately was murdered at
Auschwitz.
Career
Bergmann's association with Einstein began without his knowledge in 1933, when his mother made letter correspondence to Einstein, who was then in Belgium hiding from the Nazis. Bergmann contacted Einstein again in 1935 and arrived in the United States in 1936.
He worked with Einstein, as his research assistant, 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 ...
from October 1936 to June 1941.
After the assistantship at Princeton, Bergmann taught at
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...
and at
Lehigh University
Lehigh University (LU) is a private research university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania. The university was established in 1865 by businessman Asa Packer and was originally affiliated with the Epi ...
(1941-1944). From 1944-1947, he was engaged in war research on underwater sound at
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
and the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Bergmann was a professor at
Syracuse University from 1947 to 1982, where he was an advisor for 32 doctoral students including
Joel Lebowitz,
Pantur Silaban
Pantur Silaban (11 November 1937 – 1 August 2022) was an Indonesian physicist, regarded as one of the foremost in his profession in Indonesia, especially in the field of theoretical physics. He was also one of the earliest physicists from ASEA ...
,
John Boardman,
Ezra T. Newman
Ezra Theodore Newman (October 17, 1929 – March 24, 2021) was an American physicist, known for his many contributions to general relativity theory. He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. Newman was awarded the 2011 Einstein P ...
and
Rainer K. Sachs.
In 1947, no physics department in the United States had a center for research in
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 ...
. At Syracuse, Bergmann established one of the first research centers devoted to studying the general theory of relativity in order to reconcile it with quantum theory.
1949 Physical Review paperby Bergmann's program contained the key ideas of nonperturbative canonical general relativity. For the rest of his career, he oriented his research on those concepts. He was concerned in the interpretation of general covariance and initiated the search for observables whose commutation relations are necessary for the successful quantization of gravity. Bergmann and his students were the primary contributors to the literature of general relativity until the mid-1950s. Twenty years later, there were more than a dozen general relativity research centers and now it is in the mainstream of current physics research.
Apart from this research, he also promoted the discussion on the concept of temperature in relativistic
statistical mechanics.
When
Edward P. Tryon came out in 1973 with a paper in ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'' titled "Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?”, Tryon mentions how he learned from Bergmann how our universe could have started with
zero energy and not contradict the
conservation of energy law because
mass energy is positive and
gravitational energy
Gravitational energy or gravitational potential energy is the potential energy a massive object has in relation to another massive object due to gravity. It is the potential energy associated with the gravitational field, which is released (conver ...
is negative and they cancel each other out and so our universe then could begin with zero energy.
After his retirement from Syracuse, he was given Desk space at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
where he worked with his close friend, physicist
Engelbert Schucking until 1999.
Bergmann had an
Erdős number
The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...
of 2 (via
Ernst G. Straus to
Paul Erdős).
Publications
In 1942, Bergmann published the first textbook 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 ...
, ''Introduction to the Theory of Relativity'', with a foreword by Einstein. The second edition of this book was published by
Dover Publications
Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, book ...
in 1976.
His other textbooks were:
*''The Riddle of Gravitation'' (
Dover Publications
Dover Publications, also known as Dover Books, is an American book publisher founded in 1941 by Hayward and Blanche Cirker. It primarily reissues books that are out of print from their original publishers. These are often, but not always, book ...
OCLC 1993)
*''Basic Theories of Physics'' (
Prentice HallOCLC 1951)
*''Albert Einstein: His Influence on Physics, Philosophy and Politics'' with
Peter C. Aichelburg and
Roman Ulrich Sexl (Vieweg
OCLC1979).
Awards
Bergmann was posthumously awarded the inaugural
Einstein Prize in 2003 with
John A. Wheeler for "pioneering investigations in general relativity, including gravitational radiation, black holes, spacetime singularities, and symmetries in Einstein’s equations, and for leadership and inspiration to generations of researchers in general relativity".
He learned that he had won the prize only shortly before his death.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergmann, Peter Gabriel
American relativity theorists
Syracuse University faculty
1915 births
2002 deaths
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
Mathematical physicists
Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States
Jewish American scientists
Jewish physicists
Fellows of the American Physical Society
Albert Einstein Medal recipients