Abhay Ashtekar

Ashtekar redirects here. For Ashtekar Surname, seeSwakula Sali.

Abhay Vasant Ashtekar (born July 5, 1949) is an In-dian theoretical physicist. He is the Eberly Professorof Physics and the Director of the Institute for Gravita-tional Physics and Geometry at Pennsylvania State Uni-versity. As the creator of Ashtekar variables, he is oneof the founders of loop quantum gravity and its subeldloop quantum cosmology. He has also written a numberof descriptions of loop quantum gravity that are acces-sible to non-physicists. In 1999, Ashtekar and his col-leagues were able to calculate the entropy for a black hole,matching a legendary 1974 prediction by Hawking.[2]Oxford mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has de-scribed Ashtekars approach to quantum gravity as Themost important of all the attempts at 'quantizing' generalrelativity.[3]

1 BiographyAbhay Ashtekar grew up in several cities, includingMumbai, in the state of Maharashtra, India. After com-pleting his undergraduate education in India, Ashtekarenrolled in the graduate program for gravitation at theUniversity of Texas at Austin.[1] He went on to completehis Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under the supervi-sion of Robert Geroch in 1978 and held several appoint-ments at Oxford, Paris, Syracuse before settling at PennState.[4]

He married Christine Clarke in 1986[5] and the two havea son, Neil Ashtekar.

2 Religious ViewsDr. Abhay Ashtekar is an atheist, though he enjoys read-ing on Indian and other eastern philosophy, namely theTao and the Zen traditions. Furthermore, he claims tobe inspired from the Bhagwat Gita as regards his attitudetowards work. [6]

3 Books1. A. Magnon and A. Ashtekar, Translation from

French of lie Cartans work, Sur les Varietes a

Connexion Ane et la Relativite Generale with aCommentary and Foreword by A. Trautman, Bib-liopolis, Naples, 1986, 199 pages.

2. A. Ashtekar, Asymptotic Quantization. Bibliopolis,Naples, 1987, 107 pages.

3. A. Ashtekar, (with invited contributions) New Per-spectives in Canonical Gravity. Bibliopolis, Naples,1988, 324 pages.

4. A. Ashtekar and J. Stachel, Editors; ConceptualProblems of Quantum Gravity. Proceedings of the1988 Osgood Hill Conference (Birkhauser, N. Y.,1991), 602 pages.

5. A. Ashtekar, Lectures on Non-perturbative Canon-ical Gravity, (Notes prepared in collaboration withR.S. Tate), (World Scientic Singapore, 1991), 334pages.

6. A. Ashtekar, R.C. Cohen, D. Howard, J. Renn, S.Sarkar and A. Shimony (Editors), Revisiting theFoundations of Relativistic Physics, Festschrift inhonor of John Stachel, Boston Studies in Philosophyof Science, Volume 234, (Kluwer Academic, 2003).

4 See also List of loop quantum gravity researchers Big Bounce Martin Bojowald

5 References[1] Glanz, James (April 20, 1999). Science at work - page

2. New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2010.

[2] Glanz, James (April 20, 1999). Science at work - page3. New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2010.

[3] Glanz, James (April 20, 1999). Science at work - page1. New York Times. Retrieved April 23, 2010.

[4] Abhay Ashtekar - CV.

[5] The Redi Prole:Dr. Abhay Ashtekar. Redi on theNet.

[6] The Redi Prole:Dr. Abhay Ashtekar. Redi on theNet.

1

2 6 EXTERNAL LINKS

6 External links Abhay Ashtekar at the Mathematics GenealogyProject

Abhay Ashtekars homepage Ashtekars publication on ArXiv

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