Abhay Ashtekar Named President of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Abhay Ashtekar, Holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Physics and director of the Penn State Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos, has been named president of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The society, which promotes research in all areas of modern gravitational science and shapes the international science policies in this field, was founded by Nathan Rosen and Peter Bergmann, who were close collaborators of Albert Einstein. During the Cold War, the society played a significant role in maintaining the integrity of science by protecting scientists in closed societies from dictatorial politics. Ashtekar was elected president during the society's 2007 conference in Sydney Australia. He will serve a three-year term.

In addition to this honor, Ashtekar was one of 471 members to be named a Fellow of the AAAS this year. The association, which has a membership of about 45,000, recognized Ashtekar for his contributions to the study of general relativity and quantum gravity, in which he has brought Einstein's theory of gravity into the 21st century by developing a quantum-mechanical version of the theory. In addition to being honored for his research contributions, Ashtekar was recognized for his services to the gravitational-physics community.

In 2005, Ashtekar was recognized for his research contributions to gravitational science with an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Jena in Germany. This honor coincided with the 100th anniversary of Einstein's submission of his paper on special relativity.

Ashtekar is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in India, and an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous physics and mathematics journals, including Physical Review, Classical and Quantum Gravity, and International Journal on Differential Geometrical Methods. Currently he is the chief editor for physics for the journal Advances in Mathematical and Theoretical Physics.

Ashtekar has served as president of the American chapter of the Indian Physics Association, as chair of the Topical Group in Gravitation of the American Physical Society, and as chair of a Special Emphasis Panel of the National Science Foundation. He has authored or edited five scientific books and more than 200 scientific papers.

Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State, Ashtekar held positions as professor, distinguished professor, and the Erastus Franklin Holden Professor of Physics at Syracuse University from 1984 to 1993. Prior to that he was a professor and held the Chair of Gravitation at the University of Paris VI in France. He has held a number of other visiting chairs, including the Sir C.V. Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Sciences and Krammer's Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands. He currently holds a visiting professorship at the Beijing Normal University in China. Ashtekar earned a doctoral degree in physics at the University of Chicago and bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics at the University of Bombay in India.

CONTACTS:

Abhay Ashtekar: (+1) 814-863-9601, ava1@psu.edu

Barbara Kennedy (PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu