Kenneth Nordtvedt

Kenneth Leon Nordtvedt ( born April 16, 1939 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American physicist who deals with gravitational physics and especially experimental tests of relativistic gravitation theories.

Life

Kenneth Nordtvedt studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Bachelor 1960) and at Stanford University, where he in 1962 made ​​his master's degree in physics in 1965 and his doctorate. 1963 to 1965 he was in the Instrumentation Lab at MIT. From 1965 he was assistant professor and later professor at Montana State University in Bozeman. He is now professor emeritus.

Nordtvedt is known for experiments on verification of the equivalence principle for proposals in the 1960s. He hit accurate measurements of the distance to the moon with lasers before to test the strong equivalence principle, if the gravitational binding energy of the moon in the same way as for sluggish for heavy masses of the moon contributes ( Nordtvedt effect). After the strong equivalence principle, this should be the case and gravitational binding energy behave like all other forms of energy. Looking at Earth and Moon in the gravitational field of the sun should make a difference in the Abstandsmesssungen in violation of the principle noticeable. The General Relativity (GR ) predicts no differences, in contrast to the Brans Dicke theory, the monthly oscillations in the Earth - Moon distance predicts ( depending on the relative position of the moon ) with an amplitude of up to 10 m. Measurements in Lunar Laser Ranging experiment showed no deviations from the predictions of ART. The experiments were also a confirmation of the equivalence principle with regard to the different element composition of the heavenly bodies with a relative accuracy of 10-11.

In the 1990s, Nordtvedt was on the supervisory board NASA / ESA project for a planned test of the equivalence principle in space ( STEP, Space Test of Equivalence Principle ). From 1971 to 1973 he was Sloan Fellow. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. From 1987 he was in the National Science Board during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, as one of only two university scientists in this body.

From the early 1980s he was six years Republican congressman in the House of Representatives from Montana and interrupted at this time his research, which was previously funded in the 1970s, for example, by NASA.

He also dealt with genetic methods in the genealogy.