Demetrios Christodoulou | |
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 Christodoulou in 1982 | |
| Born | (1951-10-19)19 October 1951 (age 74) Athens, Greece |
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| Alma mater | Princeton University |
| Known for |
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| Awards |
Henri Poincaré Prize (2021) |
| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | |
| Doctoral advisor | John Archibald Wheeler |
| Doctoral students | |
Demetrios Christodoulou (Greek:Δημήτριος Χριστοδούλου; born 19 October 1951[1]) is a Greek mathematician and physicist, who first became well known for his proof, together withSergiu Klainerman, of the nonlinear stability of theMinkowski spacetime ofspecial relativity in the framework ofgeneral relativity. Christodoulou is a 1993MacArthur Fellow.
Christodoulou was born in Athens and received his doctorate in physics fromPrinceton University in 1971 under the direction ofJohn Archibald Wheeler.[2] After a temporary position atCaltech, a full professor position at the physics department of the University of Athens shortly followed. Then, after visitingCERN and theMax Planck Institute for Physics, he became professor of mathematics, first atSyracuse University, then at theCourant Institute, and at Princeton University, before taking up his last position as professor of mathematics and physics at theETH Zurich in Switzerland.[1] He is emeritus professor since January 2017. He holds dual Greek and U.S. citizenship.
In 1993, he published a book[3] coauthored with Klainerman in which their proof of the stability result is laid out in detail. In that year, he was named aMacArthur Fellow. In 1991, he published a paper[4] which shows that the test masses of a gravitational wave detector suffer permanent relative displacements after the passage of a gravitational wave train, an effect which has been named "nonlinear memory effect". In the period 1987–1999 he published a series of papers on the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric self-gravitating scalar field and the formation of black holes and associated spacetime singularities.[5][6][7] He also showed that, contrary to what had been expected, singularities which are not hidden in a black hole also occur.[8] However, he then showed that such "naked singularities" are unstable.[9] In 2000, Christodoulou published a book[10] on general systems ofpartial differential equations deriving from avariational principle (or "action principle"). In 2007, he published a book[11] on the formation ofshock waves in 3-dimensionalfluids. In 2009 he published a book[12] where a result which complements the stability result is proved. Namely, that a sufficiently strong flux of incoming gravitational waves leads to the formation of ablack hole. In 2019 he published a book[13] which addresses the development of shocks past the point of formation by studying afree boundary problem with singular initial conditions.
Christodoulou is a recipient of theBôcher Memorial Prize,[14] a prestigious award of theAmerican Mathematical Society. The Bôcher Prize citation mentions his work on the spherically symmetric scalar field as well as his work on the stability of Minkowski spacetime. In 2008, he was awarded theTomalla prize in gravitation.[15] In 2011, he andRichard S. Hamilton won theShaw Prize in the Mathematical Sciences,[16] "for their highly innovative works on nonlinear partial differential equations in Lorentzian and Riemannian geometry and their applications to general relativity and topology". The citation for Christodoulou mentions his work on the formation of black holes by gravitational waves as well as his earlier work on the spherically symmetric self-gravitating scalar field and his work with Klainerman on the stability of Minkowski spacetime. Christodoulou is a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and of theU.S. National Academy of Sciences.[17] In 2012, he became a fellow of theAmerican Mathematical Society.[18] In 2014 he was a plenary speaker at the ICM in Seoul. Since 2016, he is also a member of theAcademia Europaea.[19] In 2021, he was awarded theHenri Poincaré Prize.[20]
