Roy Kerr
Roy Kerr ( Roy Patrick Kerr, born May 16, 1934 in Kurow, New Zealand) is a New Zealand mathematician.
Kerr was known for the discovery of a solution (Kerr ) solution of the field equations of general relativity. While Karl Schwarzschild solution (the outer Schwarzschild solution ) for which in reality does not exist, static black holes found (the center of a black hole is singular: point singularity ), Roy Kerr developed a solution for rotating black holes, in which a one-dimensional ring is singular in the equatorial plane. This solution is also called the Kerr metric. It is a rare example of an exact solution of a differential equation of physics ( in this case, the Einstein's field equations), which is realized in nature, with black holes that described for the No Hair theorem by a few parameters ( angular momentum, mass, charge ) are.
Kerr's extraordinary mathematical talent was recognized when he was during his high school student at St. Andrews College in Christchurch. He earned in 1953 at the Canterbury University College graduated as a master. Kerr then went to Harvard University in Cambridge, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1960. His doctoral thesis dealt with already by the field equations of general relativity.
He then worked with a postdoctoral student at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, Peter Bergmann and for a short time in the U.S. Air Force at the Wright - Patterson Air Force Base on a bizarre anti-gravity project, which was discontinued soon. 1962 Kerr went to the University of Texas at Austin, where he developed his famous theory in 1963, whose importance was initially not recognized by astrophysicists.
In 1965 he led with Alfred shield along the Kerr spacetime one. From 1971 on, he was until his retirement in 1993 as professor of mathematics again at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch ( New Zealand) and headed for ten years as Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics.
Kerr lives a very secluded life since his retirement.
In 1984 he was awarded the Hughes Medal of the Royal Society in London and in 2006 the Marcel Grossmann Award. The Royal Society of New Zealand awarded him their 1982 Hector Medal and 1993, the Rutherford Medal. At the beginning of 2011, he was inducted for his achievements in astrophysics as a Companion ( CNZM ) in the New Zealand Order of Merit New Zealand Order of Merit. In 2013 he was awarded the Albert Einstein Medal.