Black Hole expert up there with the best

Published by the Communications and Development Department

 

30 August 2004

 

A retired University of Canterbury mathematician, Emeritus Professor Roy Kerr, has joined the likes of physicist Stephen Hawking in winning the prestigious Marcel Grossman Award.

The award, which will be officially presented at the next Marcel Grossman Meeting in St Petersburg in 2006, recognises outstanding achievements in the fields of general relativity, gravitation and relativistic theories.

Professor Kerr has won the prize for his discovery of a solution to Einstein's gravitational field equations. The Kerr Solution, as it has come to be known, provides an exact description of the space outside a rotating black hole.
With over 100 million trillion black holes in the observable universe, his achievement of 1963 has been of crucial importance for science.

It has come to be regarded as the most important exact solution to any equation in physics, and has been pivotal in understanding the most violent and energetic phenomena in the Universe.

Professor Kerr’s solution has already been recognised by the Royal Society, which awarded him its Hughes Medal in 1984, and by the Royal Society of New Zealand which awarded him its Hector Medal in 1982 and its Rutherford Medal in 1993.

He became aware of this latest award at a presentation during last week’s Kerr Fest Black Hole Symposium, which was held in honour of his 70th birthday.
More than 40 black hole experts from the UK, Europe, USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand gathered at Canterbury University for a special symposium and public lecture.

Dr David Wiltshire (Physics and Astronomy) says it is fitting that the Marcel Grossman Award comes in the form of a sculpture depicting the path of particles around a Kerr Black Hole.

The Marcel Grossman meeting, where the award will be officially presented, is held every three years. It discusses advances in relativistic astrophysics, gravitation, general relativity and relativistic field theories, with an emphasis on mathematical foundations, physical predictions, and experimental and observational tests.

 

 

For further information please contact:
John MacDonald
Communications Manager
University of Canterbury

Tel: +64-3-364 2910
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john.macdonald@canterbury.ac.nz