Charles W. Misner: Insight and Discovery

Summary

This summary of Charles Misner's publications only hints at the richness of his research. Misner's work is characterized by a fascination with geometry in its broadest sense and by a desire to probe the physical manifestations of gravitation. Many of his papers initiated new areas of study in general relativity. These areas either provide continuing research interest, have experienced one or more revivals, or have developed from an essential ingredient he provided. This review will emphasize those aspects of his research which have become part of the essential background of our subject. References [n] are to Misner's list of publications near the end of this volume.

To appreciate Misner's impact on general relativity one need only recall the state of this field when he began his research at Princeton in the 1950's. Major activities in the previous decades included the then-ignored work by Oppenheimer and Snyder on gravitational collapse and by Alpher and Herman predicting a 5 degree cosmic background radiation. Apart from cosmology, the appreciated work included the Einstein-Infeld-Hoffman equations of motion results from the late 1930's, Bergmann's studies of quantum gravity from the early 1950's, and the studies of the initial value problem by Lichnerowicz and Fourès (Choquet-Bruhat). Active centers with an interest in general relativity as Wheeler started his group at Princeton included those led by Bergmann at Syracuse, Lichnerowicz and Fourès-Bruhat in France, Bondi in London, Klein and Møller in Scandinavia, Synge and Pirani in Dublin (one of Schild's sojourns also), Jordan and Ehlers in Hamburg, Inf eld in Warsaw, and a few others.