Matthew Choptuik
Matthew W. Choptuik | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 (age 62–63) |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | University of British Columbia |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Thesis | A Study of Numerical Techniques for Radiative Problems in General Relativity (1986) |
| Doctoral advisor | W. G. Unruh |
| Doctoral students | Frans Pretorius |
Matthew William Choptuik (born 1961) is a Canadian theoretical physicist specializing in numerical relativity.
Choptuik graduated from University of British Columbia with a master's degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. advised by William Unruh in 1986. He became an associate professor in 1995 at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1999 he became a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in the same year he became a professor at University of British Columbia.
In 1993,[1] he discovered critical phenomena in gravitational collapse[2] via numerical studies. He showed—under non-generic initial conditions [3]—the possibility of the occurrence of naked singularity in general relativity with scalar matter. This had previously been the subject of a bet between Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne and John Preskill. Hawking lost the bet after Choptuik's publication, but renewed it under non-generic initial conditions.[4]
Choptuik was the 2001 awardee of the Rutherford Memorial Medal. In 2003 he received the CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. In 2003 he became a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2002, he became an honorary doctor of Brandon University.
References
- ^ Choptuik, Universality and Scaling in Gravitational Collapse of a Massless Scalar Field, Phys. Rev. Lett. , Volume 70, 1993, pp. 9-12 doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.70.9
- ^ Gundlach, C. & Martín-García, J.M. Living Rev. Relativ. (2007) 10: 5.
- ^ Only with precise fine tuning of the initial conditions, which is lost even with small perturbations
- ^ Matt Crenson, The naked truth: Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking loses a bet, APS News, February 12, 1997
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- 1961 births
- Living people
- Canadian expatriate academics in the United States
- Fellows of the American Physical Society
- 20th-century Canadian physicists
- Theoretical physicists
- 21st-century Canadian physicists
- University of British Columbia Faculty of Science alumni
- University of Texas at Austin faculty
- University of California, Santa Barbara faculty
- Academic staff of the University of British Columbia