Robert M. Wald | |
|---|---|
 Wald in 2012 | |
| Born | June 29, 1947 (1947-06-29) (age 77) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Columbia University (A.B. 1968) Princeton University (PhD 1972) |
| Known for | General Relativity (1984) Wald's formula for black-hole entropy |
| Father | Abraham Wald |
| Awards | Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2001) Einstein Prize (APS) (2017) Albert Einstein Medal (2025) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Gravitational physics |
| Institutions | University of Maryland, College Park University of Chicago |
| Thesis | Nonspherical gravitational collapse and black hole uniqueness (1972) |
| Doctoral advisor | John Archibald Wheeler |
Robert M. Wald (/wɔːld/; born June 29, 1947 inNew York City) is an Americantheoreticalphysicist and professor at theUniversity of Chicago. He studies general relativity, black holes, and quantum gravity and has written textbooks on these subjects.
He is the son of the mathematician and statisticianAbraham Wald and great-grandson of the chief rabbiMoshe Shmuel Glasner. Wald's parents died in a plane crash when he was three years old.[1] He earned his Bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1968 and his PhD in physics from Princeton University in 1972,[2] under the supervision ofJohn Archibald Wheeler. His doctoral dissertation was titledNonspherical Gravitational Collapse and Black Hole Uniqueness.[3]
Between 1972 and 1974, Robert Wald worked as a research associate in physics at theUniversity of Maryland.[3] He then moved to the University of Chicago, spending two years as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the faculty in 1976.[4] He wanted to move to Chicago in order to work withRobert Geroch and other specialists in gravitation.[5]
In 1977, Wald published a popular-science book titledSpace, Time, and Gravity: The Theory of the Big Bang and Black Holes explaining Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, and its implications in cosmology and astrophysics. The book also gives a survey of what was then ongoing research ongravitational collapse andblack holes. This book grew out of a series of lectures Wald gave as part of the Compton Lectures at the University of Chicago in the spring of 1976.[6] The Compton Lectures, given every Spring and Fall quarter, are intended to explain notable advances in the physical sciences to members of the general public.[7]
He published the textbookGeneral Relativity in 1984. Aimed at beginning graduate students, it coversspinors, thevariational principles, theinitial-value formulation, (exact) gravitational waves, singularities,Penrose diagrams,Hawking radiation, andblack-hole thermodynamics.[8]
Wald has taught first-year graduate courses covering a broad range of topics, including classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and electromagnetism. He has also taught courses ongeneral relativity, his specialty, at both introductory and advanced levels. A particularly effective teacher, he received the Graduate Teaching Award from the University of Chicago in 1997.[9]
Wald investigates black holes and their thermodynamics, and gravitational radiation-reaction (or self-force).[4] Due to quantum-mechanical processes, black holes emit particles and therefore have a definite temperature and entropy.[10] Wald has published over 100 research papers on general relativity andquantum field theory in curved spacetime, many of which have been cited by hundreds of subsequent papers.[11] In 1993, he described the Wald entropy of ablack hole, which is dependent simply on the area of the event horizon of the black hole.[12]
He organized The Symposium on Black Holes and Relativistic Stars in 1996, in honor of the late Nobel Prize-winning theoretical astrophysicistSubrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Distinguished speakers of this event includedStephen Hawking,Roger Penrose andMartin Rees. Although the event charged an entrance fee of $100, Wald made sure all University of Chicago students were admitted free of charge.[9] Chandrasekhar founded a research group on general relativity at the University of Chicago, which includes Wald,James Hartle and Robert Geroch.[13] Although Wald and Chandrasekhar never collaborated on any particular research projects, the two developed warm relations.[5]
He became a fellow of theAmerican Physical Society (APS) in 1996 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.[3] He received theEinstein Prize from the APS Division of Gravitational Physics in 2017 for "the discovery of the general formula for black hole entropy, and for developing a rigorous formulation of quantum field theory in curved spacetime."[4]
Wald delivered a public lecture at theUniversity of Alabama in October 27, 2015, titled "The Formulation of General Relativity," celebrating the centennial of Einstein's theory.[14] Wald is a member of theLIGO group at the University of Chicago, headed by astrophysicist Daniel Holz. The Laser Interferometry Gravitational-wave Observatory detectedgravitational waves for the first time in 2015, one century after Einstein predicted their existence.[15]
