Willem Jacob van Stockum (20 November 1910 – 10 June 1944) was a Dutch mathematician who made an important contribution to the early development of

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 ...

Biography

Van Stockum was born in

Hattem Hattem () is a municipality and a city in the eastern Netherlands. The municipality had a population of in . The municipality includes the hamlet of 't Zand. Name origin The name “Hattem” is a typical farmyard name. The exact origin of “H ...

in the

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. His father was a mechanically talented officer in the

Dutch Navy The Royal Netherlands Navy (, ) is the Navy, maritime service branch of the Netherlands Armed Forces. It traces its history to 8 January 1488, making it the List of navies, third-oldest navy in the world. During the 17th and early 18th centurie ...

. After the family (less the father) relocated to Ireland in the late 1920s, Willem studied mathematics at

Trinity College Trinity College may refer to: Australia * Trinity Anglican College, an Anglican coeducational primary and secondary school in , New South Wales * Trinity Catholic College, Auburn, a coeducational school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney, New ...

Dublin Dublin is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, pa ...

, where he earned a gold medal. He went on to earn an M.A. from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

and his Ph.D. from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

in 1937. In the mid-1930s, van Stockum became an early enthusiast of the then new theory of

gravitation In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...

, general relativity. In 1938, he published a paper which contains one of the first exact solutions in general relativity which modeled 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 ...

produced by a configuration of ''rotating'' matter, the van Stockum dust, which remains an important example noted for its unusual simplicity. In this paper, van Stockum was apparently the first to notice the possibility of

closed timelike curve In mathematical physics, a closed timelike curve (CTC) is a world line in a Lorentzian manifold, of a material particle in spacetime, that is "closed", returning to its starting point. This possibility was first discovered by Willem Jacob van St ...

s, one of the strangest and most disconcerting phenomena in general relativity. Van Stockum left for the United States in hope of studying under

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein (14 March 187918 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence f ...

, eventually in the spring of 1939 gaining a temporary position under Professor

Oswald Veblen Oswald Veblen (June 24, 1880 – August 10, 1960) was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905; while this was lo ...

at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

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

. The outbreak of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

occurred while he was teaching at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

. Anxious to join the fight against Hitler, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force, eventually earning his pilots wings in July 1942. Because of his advanced knowledge of

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

, he spent much of the next year as a test pilot in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. After the Netherlands was invaded by Hitler, van Stockum sought to join the war as a pilot. Finally, he was able to transfer to the

Dutch Air Force The Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF; , "Royal Air Force") is the military aviation branch of the Netherlands Armed Forces. It was created in 1953 to succeed its predecessor, the ''Luchtvaartafdeling'' () of the Dutch Army, which was founded i ...

(in exile), and in 1944 became the only Dutch officer posted to No. 10 Sqron of the

RAF Bomber Command RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the Strategic bombing during World War II#Europe, strategic bombing of Germany in W ...

, which was stationed in

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

and flew combat missions in the ''Halifax'' heavy bomber over Europe before and after the

Normandy invasion Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 ( D-Day) with the ...

. On 10 June 1944, van Stockum and his crew of six took off on their sixth combat mission, as part of another 400-plane raid. Near their target, the plane was hit by

flak Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface ( submarine-launched), and air-bas ...

, and all seven crew members were lost, along with seven from another bomber on the same mission. The fourteen airmen are buried in Laval, near the place where the planes went down.

Literature

By van Stockum

* Doctoral thesis Edinburgh. * The original paper presenting the rediscovery of Lanczos' 1924 dust solution, nowadays referred to as the Lanczos-van Stockum solution. * Essay written by van Stockum published under the byline "''a bomber pilot''", due to wartime security restrictions.

By others

* * Translated reprint of Van Stockum rediscovered Lanczos's result. * Translation of an article by a historian published in the

magazine "De Vliegende Hollander". * Historical fiction by Robert P. Wack, set in Normandy in June 1944. Van Stockum's life and work inspired this book. Also available as {{DEFAULTSORT:Stockum, Willem Jacob van Dutch relativity theorists People from Hattem 1910 births 1944 deaths Alumni of the University of Edinburgh 20th-century Dutch mathematicians Royal Canadian Air Force personnel of World War II Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve personnel of World War II Royal Air Force pilots of World War II Royal Air Force personnel killed in World War II Aviators killed by being shot down