Andrzej Trautman | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1933-01-04)4 January 1933 (age 93) |
| Alma mater | Warsaw University of Technology |
| Known for | Robinson–Trautmangravitational waves Trautman recovery theorem inNewton–Cartan theory |
| Awards | Marian Smoluchowski Medal (1986) Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science (2017) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | University of Warsaw |
| Doctoral advisor | Leopold Infeld |
| Doctoral students | Jerzy Lewandowski |
Andrzej Mariusz Trautman (Polish:[ˈtrauman]; born January 4, 1933) is a Polishmathematical physicist who has made contributions to classicalgravitation in general and togeneral relativity in particular.
He made contributions to gravitation as early as 1958.[1] The "Trautman-Bondi mass" is named after him.[2]
Trautman was born inWarsaw,Poland into an artistic family. His father, Mieczysław, was a painter and taught drawing at a secondary school inWarsaw. His mother, Eliza Trautman (née André), wasFrench, though she was born inSpain, where her father,Marius André, was working as a French consular officer. His schooling, at the elementary level, was interrupted by theWarsaw Uprising of 1944. After spending about ten months in Germany, he returned, with his mother (his father had died in 1941) to Poland. In the fall of 1945, they both went to Paris, to stay with their family there. In France, Trautman attended a Polish secondary school from which he graduated in 1949 and returned to Poland shortly afterwards.
During the years 1949–55, he studied radio engineering at theWarsaw University of Technology. After earning a master's degree under the influence of Warsaw Tech's theoretical physics professorJerzy Plebański,[3] he continued graduate work inLeopold Infeld's group at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of theUniversity of Warsaw. This Institute was to become his permanent place of study and work. He obtained in 1959 thePh.D. degree at the Institute of Physics of thePolish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.[4] In 1961, Trautman and his colleague Róża Michalska spent a few months atSyracuse University, at the invitation ofPeter G. Bergmann. The year after, Róża and Andrzej married inKraków.
Trautman andIvor Robinson discovered a family of exact solutions of theEinstein field equations, the Robinson–Trautmangravitational waves.[5]
In 1977, Trautman identified theDirac monopole with theHopf fibration.[6]
In 1981, Trautman became a founding member of theWorld Cultural Council.[7]
