Ashtekar Receives Honorary Doctorate in Germany

10 January 2006—Abhay Ashtekar, Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, has received an honorary doctorate from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany. The presentation of this award, on 27 September 2005, was timed to coincide with the 100th Anniversary of the publication of Einstein's paper on special relativity.

Ashtekar was honored "for research and achievements in the field of Einstein's gravity that have influenced the most varied aspects of gravitational theory in a profound way," according to the award citation. "His research in gravitational theory is notable for its breadth, covering quantum gravity and generalizations of quantum mechanics, as well as classical general relativity, the mathematical theory of black holes, and gravitational waves." Following the presentation, Ashtekar gave a public lecture titled "Explorations of the Beginning and the End: From Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond."

Ashtekar has contributed substantially to the analysis of the gravitational fields of isolated gravitating systems at large distances from their sources. In 1986 he discovered new variables to describe the gravitational field, which enabled him and his collaborators to make major progress toward the development of a quantum theory of gravity. This work led, in particular, to a new mathematical description of the structure of spacetime as polymer-like at the smallest scale.

The citation also notes that "Ashtekar's work on the canonical quantization of gravitation, which is based upon a reformulation of Einstein's field equations that Ashtekar presented in 1986, has proved to be a fruitful approach to quantum gravity and has fostered a new field of study. He was ahead of his time in his non-perturbative treatment of gravitational interaction, which has now become a central topic in string theory."

Ashtekar has been the founding director of the Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry since 1993. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in India, and an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has been chief editor for physics for the journal Advances in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics since 1997, and a managing editor for the International Journal of Modern Physics-D since 1992.

Ashtekar was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow from 1981 to 1985. He was elected to the governing council of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, where he served from 1989 to 1998. He received the Forschungspreis—the Award for Senior U.S. Scientists—from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany in 2004. He also was the Sir C.V. Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Science from 2004 to 2005.

Ashtekar served as president of the American chapter of the Indian Physics Association from 2000 to 2002, and as chair of the Topical Group in Gravitation of the American Physical Society in 1998. He has authored or edited six scientific books and more than 170 scientific papers. Ashtekar is renowned as one of the most cited researchers in the field of relativity, and has given plenary talks at more than 90 international conferences. In 2000, he was profiled in the New York Times as part of a series of articles titled "Scientists at Work."

Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Ashtekar held positions as professor, distinguished professor, and the Erastus Franklin Holden Professor of Physics at Syracuse University from 1984 to 1993. Prior to that, he was professor and chair of gravitation at the University of Paris VI in France. He earned his doctoral degree in physics at the University of Chicago in 1974 and his bachelor’s degree with honors in physics and mathematics at the University of Bombay, India, in 1969.

The Friedrich Schiller University, located in Jena, Germany, was founded in 1558. This honorary doctorate "is meant to signify that Einstein's science is alive and well in Germany and in Jena," according to the citation. "It also is meant to strengthen, through Professor Ashtekar, our ties to leading international research." Ashtekar joins a long and distinguished list of honorary doctoral-degree recipients, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Weimar Auguste Rodin.

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