Stanley Deser facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Stanley Deser
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| Born | March 19, 1931 Równe, Poland (now Rivne, Ukraine)
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| Died | April 21, 2023 (aged 92) Pasadena, California, U.S.
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| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | Harvard University (Ph.D) |
| Known for | ADM formalism Boulware–Deser ghost Quantum gravity Pure 4D N = 1 supergravity Conformal anomaly 2+1 dimensional gravities and Chern–Simons quantum field theory Partially massless systems in anti-de Sitter space |
| Awards | Einstein Medal, Dannie Heineman Prize, Guggenheim Fellow, Fulbright Fellow, Fellow of the American Physical Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Accademia delle Scienze di Torino, Italy |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | California Institute of Technology, Brandeis University |
| Doctoral advisor | Julian Seymour Schwinger |
| Notable students | Lee Smolin |
Stanley Deser (born March 19, 1931 – died April 21, 2023) was an American physicist. He was famous for his important work on general relativity. This is a big theory about how gravity works. He was a professor at Brandeis University and also worked at California Institute of Technology.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Stanley Deser was born on March 19, 1931. His birthplace was Równe, Poland. Today, this city is called Rivne in Ukraine.
He was a very good student. He earned his first degree in 1949 from Brooklyn College in New York. Then, he went to Harvard University. There, he earned his master's degree in 1950. He finished his doctorate degree in 1953. His special project was about how two things interact in a relativistic way.
After Harvard, he worked at important places. From 1953 to 1955, he was at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He also worked at the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark. He taught at Harvard and was a visiting professor in France and England.
Important Discoveries
Stanley Deser made big contributions to physics. He worked with Richard Arnowitt and Charles Misner. Together, they created something called the ADM formalism.
The ADM Formalism
The ADM formalism is a way to understand spacetime. Imagine spacetime as a series of slices of space that change over time. This method helps scientists describe Einstein's theory of general relativity. It uses a special physics framework called the Hamiltonian formalism.
This framework also helps define the total energy or mass of a system. In general relativity, figuring out the total energy can be tricky. But the ADM formalism made it much easier. This total energy is often called ADM mass/energy. Deser also worked on extending this idea for gravity with a "cosmological constant." With Claudio Teitelboim, he showed that a theory called supergravity has positive energy.
Quantum Gravity and Supergravity
Another area Deser studied was quantum gravity. This field tries to combine gravity with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics describes how tiny particles behave.
Deser used new methods developed by other scientists. With Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, he showed that some theories combining general relativity with other forces were not "renormalizable." This means they had problems when trying to calculate things at very small scales.
However, in 1976, Deser and Bruno Zumino made a breakthrough. They showed that you could add a special particle (a spin 3/2 field) to general relativity. This created a new theory called supergravity. Supergravity is a consistent theory that includes a concept called "supersymmetry."
Awards and Recognition
Stanley Deser received many honors for his work.
- In 1994, he, along with Arnowitt and Misner, won the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics.
- He also won the 2015 Einstein Medal with Charles Misner.
- He was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow.
- He received special honorary degrees from Stockholm University and the Chalmers Institute of Technology.
- He was a member of important groups like the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the United States National Academy of Sciences.
- In 2021, he became a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. This is a very special honor.
In 2004, a conference was held in his honor in Michigan. Another conference celebrated his work and the ADM formalism in 2009.
Personal Life
Stanley Deser was married to Elsbeth Deser, who was an artist from Sweden. They had three children. His daughter, Clara Deser, is also a scientist. She studies climate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Stanley Deser wrote a book about his life called "Forks in the Road." It was published in 2021. He passed away in Pasadena, California, on April 21, 2023, when he was 92 years old.
See also
- Polyakov action
