|
[Main Page]
[Announcements]
[Registration]
[Program]
[Speakers and talk titles] [Participants] [Social events] [Locations] |
|||
The Gunnar Nordström Symposium on Theoretical PhysicsHelsinki, August 27-30, 2003 |
|
This is the first symposium to celebrate Gunnar Nordström and his intellectual heritage. The symposium welcomes physicists from all over the world to discuss exciting new theoretical and experimental developments in topics related to gravity, string theory, novel models of cosmology and physics with higher dimensions. Many of the talks in the symposium will be from invited speakers, but time has also been planned for talks by participants. The participants are encouraged to submit abstracts. The Symposium will be held in the new Physicum building at the Kumpula Campus of the University of Helsinki. |
|
| Gunnar Nordström (1881-1923) |
|
Gunnar Nordström
is without doubt one of the most famous and original Finnish physicists.
Nordström played an important role in the development of general theory
of relativity, in part in correspondence and in part in competition with
Einstein. He developed a scalar theory of gravity which Einstein
himself initially considered as a serious rival of his
general theory of relativity. Later when it became apparent that Nature
had not chosen Nordström's theory, he become one of the earliest supporters
of Einstein's theory.
Nordström and Hans Reissner found an electrically charged spherically symmetric solution of Einsteins's equations, which was later understood to describe the spacetime of an electrically charged black hole; the solution is called the Reissner-Nordström metric. Nordström's most visionary idea, as early as 1914, was to introduce a higher dimension in spacetime as a way to combine electromagnetism with (his scalar theory of) gravity. Unfortunately, this idea was forgotten for some time as the First World War erupted, and Nordström's promising career was cut short by his death at the early age of 42. Later, after the war, the idea of unification in extra dimensions was again discovered independently and popularized by Theodor Kaluza and Oskar Klein, and became known as the Kaluza-Klein mechanism. Since then, extra dimensions have become standard fare in string theory and modern models of cosmology. |
| THE SYMPOSIUM |
MAPS
|
| TRANSPORTATION | MORE INFORMATION ABOUT |
| DIRECTIONS | ACCOMODATION |
Last updated 20 Aug 2003 Ossi Pasanen |