James A. Isenberg (born 1951) is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, professor emeritus at the University of Oregon.
James A. Isenberg Professor Emeritus | |
---|---|
Occupation(s) | Mathematician Physicist |
Title | Professor of Mathematics |
Awards | American Physical Society Fellow American Mathematical Society Fellow |
Academic background | |
Education | 1973 A.B. in physics, Princeton University 1979 Ph.D. in physics, University of Maryland |
Thesis | Construction of Spacetimes from Initial Data (1979) |
Doctoral advisor | Charles Misner |
Isenberg was born in 1951. He became an Eagle Scout in 1966,[1] and in 1969 graduated from Plymouth-Whitemarsh High School in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.[2]
When he ran the Boston Marathon at age 18, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported he "is 5 feet 1 inch tall, weighs 95 pounds and looks about 13."[3][4] He wore his birth certificate pinned to his jersey to prove his age.[3] Isenberg says he has "completed 143 marathons, including 30 Boston Marathons."[5]
At Princeton University he graduated with an A.B. in physics in 1973. He was a graduate student under Charles Misner at the University of Maryland, and he earned Ph.D. in physics in 1979, with his dissertation, Construction of Spacetimes from Initial Data.[6]
In Australia in 2017, Isenberg was standing in the ocean when a wave knocked him over, injuring his spinal cord and leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. He has been recovering with therapy at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia.[5] In 2019 at the Princeton alumni parade, he "led his class down the route in a wheelchair".[7]
Isenberg lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife, economist Pauline Kennedy.[5]
Isenberg is one of the pioneers in the study of the constraint equations in classical general relativity.[8] His many important contributions include the completion of the solution theory of the constraint equations on closed manifolds with constant mean curvature,[9] and with his collaborators, the first nontrivial results on the non-constant mean curvature case.[10]
From 1973 to 1979, Isenberg held positions in the physics department at the University of Maryland. Between 1979 and 1982 he held a postdoctoral fellow positions in the applied mathematics department of the University of Waterloo and the mathematics department at the University of California, Berkeley.[2]
Isenberg joined the mathematics department faculty at the University of Oregon in 1982 and in 2021 became a professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of Oregon.[11]
Isenberg was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2000, cite "For his pioneering work on global issues in general relativity and for his contributions to the field."[12]
He was named to the 2021 class of fellows of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to mathematical general relativity and geometry flows".[13]
The Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting has been dedicated to Isenberg as of the 34th meeting at Caltech in 2018.[14] The conference is now known as the Jim Isenberg Pacific Coast Gravity Meeting.[15][16][17]