Bruno Bertotti (24 December 1930 – 20 October 2018) was an Italian physicist, emeritus professor at the

University of Pavia The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it on ...

. He was one of the last students of physicist

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...

. Bertotti was well 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. ...

– particularly the Bertotti-Robinson electrovacuum, an exact solution of 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 ...

. He has also obtained a more accurate measurement of the parameter gamma of the

parameterized post-Newtonian formalism In physics, precisely in the study of the theory of general relativity and many alternatives to it, the post-Newtonian formalism is a calculational tool that expresses Einstein's (nonlinear) equations of gravity in terms of the lowest-order dev ...

, with the Cassini radioscience experiment. The PPN gamma parameter measures the curvature of space in the

metric theory of gravitation In general relativity, the metric tensor (in this context often abbreviated to simply the metric) is the fundamental object of study. It may loosely be thought of as a generalization of the gravitational potential of Newtonian gravitation. The ...

and it is equal to one in

. More recent studies revealed that the measured value of the PPN parameter gamma is affected by

gravitomagnetic Gravitoelectromagnetism, abbreviated GEM, refers to a set of formal analogies between the equations for electromagnetism and relativistic gravitation; specifically: between Maxwell's field equations and an approximation, valid under certain ...

effect caused by the orbital motion of Sun around the

barycenter In astronomy, the barycenter (or barycentre; ) is the center of mass of two or more bodies that orbit one another and is the point about which the bodies orbit. A barycenter is a dynamical point, not a physical object. It is an important co ...

of the solar system. The gravitomagnetic effect in the Cassini radioscience experiment was implicitly postulated by Bertotti as having a pure general relativistic origin but its theoretical value has been never tested in the experiment which effectively makes the experimental uncertainty in the measured value of gamma actually larger (by a factor of 10) than that claimed by Bertotti and co-authors in Nature. Between 1953 and 1956, Bertotti worked as a scholar at the Dublin Institute for Avanced Studies. Following, Bertotti was a visiting scholar 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 scholar ...

in Princeton, in 1958-59.Institute for Advanced Study: A Community of Scholars
/ref> In 2007 he was awarded the Italian Gold Medal for Merit in Science and Culture. Among the last scholars in relativity from the University of Pavia are Alessandro Spallicci and Alberto Vecchio.

References

1930 births 2018 deaths 20th-century Italian physicists Academic staff of the University of Pavia Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Scientists from Mantua {{Italy-physicist-stub Academics of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies