Abhay Ashtekar

Abhay Vasant Ashtekar ( born July 5, 1949 in Shirpur, India) is a theoretical physicist who deals with gravitational physics.

Ashtekar studied at the University of Bombay with a bachelor 's degree in 1969 and in 1974 received his doctorate at the University of Chicago with Robert Geroch. 1983 to 1985 he was a professor at the University of Paris VI and from 1984 professor at Syracuse University, where he conducted research since 1980. In 1993 he was Eberly Professor of Physics at Pennsylvania State University and Director of the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos.

He was a visiting professor and visiting scholar at various Indian universities such as the Raman Institute in Bangalore, in Utrecht, the University of Maryland, the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Garching and in Beijing.

Abhay Ashketar is co-founder of the theory of loop quantum gravity. From him comes the cosmological model of the quantum bounce.

In 1979 he received the first prize of the Gravity Research Foundation. 1981 to 1985 he was a Sloan Fellow. He became an honorary member of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Indian Academy of Sciences) and 1997 foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of India, 1996. He holds honorary doctorates from the Friedrich -Schiller- University Jena ( 2005). In 2004 he received the Senior Scientist Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. 2007 to 2010 he was president of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation.