Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli (born 3 May 1956 Verona ) is an Italian physicist, professor at the University of Marseille.

Rovelli studied physics in 1975 at the University of Bologna with a degree ( Laurea ) degree in 1981 and in 1986 received his doctorate at the University of Padua. As a post - graduate student he was at Imperial College London ( 1986), at the University of Rome (1987 /88), Yale University (1987 ), Syracuse University (1989 ) and at SISSA in Trieste (1989). 1988/89 he was assistant professor at the Universita dell Aquila and 1990 Assistant Professor and Associate in 1994 and 1999, Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. 1998/99 he was Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Physics (CPT ) in Luminy. In 2000 he became a professor in Marseille.

Together with Lee Smolin ( building on the work of Ashtekar ), he developed a theory of quantum gravity, which became known as loop quantum gravity. In 1994, he exhibited with Smolin that the observables for area and volume in theory have discrete values.

With Alain Connes he introduced to tackle the fundamental problem of the role of time in quantum gravity, the thermal time hypothesis to the effect that the arrow of time is a purely emergent thermodynamic process.

He developed in 1996 a relational interpretation of quantum mechanics ( see interpretations of quantum mechanics).

He was co-editor from 1996 to 2006 by General Relativity and Gravitation and the editorial board of Nuovo Cimento B, Classical and Quantum Gravity and Foundations of Physics and 1995-2005 of the Journal of Mathematical Physics. He is the editor of the section quantum gravity of the Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré.

It has the Italian and U.S. citizenship.

Writings

• Quantum Gravity, Cambridge University Press 2004
• "What is time? What is space? " Di Renzo Editore, Roma, 2006, ISBN 8883231465
• Loop Quantum Gravity, Living Reviews in Relativity