Jerzy Lewandowski (; 15 September 1959 – 8 October 2024) was a Polish theoretical physicist best known for his extensive research into

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, and as Einstein's theory of gravity, is the differential geometry, geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of grav ...

and

quantum gravity Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the v ...

Biography

Lewandowski was professor of physics at the

University of Warsaw The University of Warsaw (, ) is a public university, public research university in Warsaw, Poland. Established on November 19, 1816, it is the largest institution of higher learning in the country, offering 37 different fields of study as well ...

. He received his doctorate in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

under

Andrzej Trautman Andrzej Mariusz Trautman (; born January 4, 1933) is a Polish mathematical physicist who has made contributions to classical gravitation in general and to general relativity in particular. He made contributions to gravitation as early as 1958. T ...

. He worked closely with

Abhay Ashtekar Abhay Vasant Ashtekar (born 5 July 1949) is an Indian theoretical physicist who created Ashtekar variables and is one of the founders of loop quantum gravity and its subfield loop quantum cosmology. Ashtekar has also written a number of descr ...

Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsyl ...

in the 1990s on the mathematical justification of

Loop Quantum Gravity Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is a theory of quantum gravity that incorporates matter of the Standard Model into the framework established for the intrinsic quantum gravity case. It is an attempt to develop a quantum theory of gravity based direc ...

(LQG). Among other things, he was at the Erwin Schrödinger Institute in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

and at the

Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics The Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) is a Max Planck Institute whose research is aimed at investigating Einstein's theory of relativity and beyond: Mathematics, quantum gravity, astrophysical relativity ...

in Golm near

Potsdam Potsdam () is the capital and largest city of the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the Havel, River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...

. He dealt with cosmological models and the entropy of black holes in the LQG. In 2010 he and his colleagues investigated a scalar field together with the

gravitational field In physics, a gravitational field or gravitational acceleration field is a vector field used to explain the influences that a body extends into the space around itself. A gravitational field is used to explain gravitational phenomena, such as ...

as part of LQG and were able to show the origin of a time as the ratio of the scalar to the gravitational field, and the quantization of the gravitational field. Lewandowski died on 8 October 2024, at the age of 65.

Publications

* With Ashtekar ''Background independent quantum gravity: a status report'', Classical and Quantum Gravity, Band 21, 2004, R 5
Arxiv
* Abhay Ashtekar, Jerzy Lewandowski, Donald Marolf, Jose Mourao, Thomas Thiemann ''Quantization of diffeomorphism invariant theories of connections with local degrees of freedom'', J. Mathematical Physics, Band 36, 1995, S. 6456–6493
Arxiv
* With Ashtekar ''Quantum theory of Gravity I. Area Operators'', Classical and Quantum Gravity, Band 14, 1997, A 55-82,
Arxiv
Volume II: ''Volume Operators''
Arxiv
* With Martin Bojowald, Ashtekar ''Mathematical structure of loop quantum cosmology'', Adv.Theor.Math.Phys., Band 7, 2003, S. 233-268
Arxiv

References

External links

Professor Jerzy Lewandowski
1959 births 2024 deaths Polish relativity theorists Loop quantum gravity researchers Academic staff of the University of Warsaw {{Poland-scientist-stub