Christopher Isham

Christopher Isham, Chris J. Isham cited as CJ Isham or, ( born April 28, 1944) is a British theoretical physicist who deals with mathematical physics, especially in quantum gravity and the foundations of quantum mechanics.

Isham was initially electronics engineer, but then studied theoretical physics at Imperial College, where he earned his doctorate under Paul Taunton Matthews 1969. As a post - graduate student he was a year when Abdus Salam ICTP in Trieste. In 1970 he was a lecturer at Imperial College in 1973 and Reader in Applied Mathematics at King's College London. In 1976 he was again at Imperial College as a reader and, in 1982 Professor of Theoretical Physics. Today he is a professor emeritus.

He applies for several decades as one of the leading scientists in quantum gravity, in which he introduced a new mathematical concepts, as a group theoretical approach to quantization. His methods were later in the development of loop quantum gravity by Abhay Vasant Ashtekar and other uses. He also dealt with the problem of time in quantum gravity. He wrote early work on quantum field theory in curved space-times ( where he developed the concept of twisted quantum fields introduced ). , Such as the anti - de Sitter space and conformal anomalies

In the foundations of quantum mechanics, he has contributed to Decoherent Histories access ( by Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle, Robert Griffiths, Roland Omnes and others) with a he developed temporal quantum logic ( HPO formalism, History Projection Operator).

He is a committed Christian and deals with the relationship between science and religion as well as philosophy, where he is influenced by CG Jung.

In the 2000s he used category theoretical concepts ( topos theory ) in the formulation of fundamental physical theories and quantum gravity.

In 2011 he was awarded the Dirac Medal of the Institute of Physics.

Writings

• With Roger Penrose, Dennis Sciama (Editor) Quantum gravity -an Oxford Symposium, Clarendon Press 1975
• Penrose, Sciama (Editor) Quantum gravity 2 A second Oxford Symposium, Oxford University Press 1981
• Lectures on Quantum Theory. Mathematical and Structural Foundations, World Scientific / Imperial College Press 1995, 2001
• Quantum Gravity, in Paul Davies The new physics, Cambridge University Press 1989
• Structural Issues in Quantum Gravity, GR 14 plenary lecture, 1995
• With Butterfield The emergence of time in quantum gravity, in Butterfield (Editor) The origin of Time, 1999
• With Butterfield Spacetime and the philosophical challenge of quantum gravity, in Callender, Huggett Physics meets philosophy at the Planck scale, Cambridge University Press 2000
• Penrose (Editor) Quantum concepts of space and time, Oxford University Press 1986
• Topological and global aspects of quantum theory in Bryce DeWitt, Raymond Stora (Eds. ), Relativity, Groups and Topology 2, North Holland, 1984 ( Les Houches Lectures 1983)
• Modern differential geometry for physicists, 2nd Edition, World Scientific 1999
• Prima facies questions in quantum gravity, in Ehlers, H. Friedrich ( Editor) Canonical Gravity: from classical to quantum, Lecture Notes in Physics, Volume 434, 1994, pp. 1-21
• Canonical quantum gravity and the problem- of time, in Ibort, Rodriguez (Editor) Integrable systems, quantum groups and quantum field theory, Kluwer 1993, pp. 157-287