- Carlo Rovelli
Carlo Rovelli is an Italian physicist and cosmologist who has worked in Italy, the USA, and France. He was born in Verona, Italy in 1956. He is currently at the
Université de la Méditerranée , in the Centre de Physique Théorique, inMarseille ,France . He is also affiliated Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science of the University of Pittsburgh, USA and member of the Institut Universitaire de France. In1981 he graduated with a BS/MS in Physics at theUniversity of Bologna and in1986 he obtained his PhD degree at theUniversity of Padova , Italy. His work is mainly in the field ofquantum gravity .In 1988 Carlo Rovelli,
Lee Smolin andAbhay Ashtekar have introduced a theory ofquantum gravity denotedloop quantum gravity . In 1995 Rovelli and Smolin obtained an explicit basis of states of quantum gravity, labelled by Penrose'sspin networks , and using this basis they were able to show that the theory predicts that area and volume are quantized. This result indicates the existence of a discrete structure of space at the very small scale.In 1994 Rovelli introduced the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on the idea that all quantum states are relative to an observer.
With
Alain Connes he formulated a covariant model ofQuantum field theory , based on the thermal time hypothesis. According to this hypothesis time does not exist in the fundamental theory and emerges only in a thermodynamical or statistical context. If this were correct the flow of time would be an illusion, deriving from the incompleteness of knowledge.In 1995 Rovelli received the International Xanthopoulos Award for his contributions to theoretical physics.
Books
*"Quantum Gravity", "Cambridge University Press", ISBN 0-521-83733-2
*"Che cos'è il tempo? Che cos'è lo spazio? ",Di Renzo Editore , ISBN 88-8323-082-5
*"Qu'est-ce le temps? Qu'est-ce l'espace? ", Bernard Gilson éditeur, ISBN 2-87269-159-6.
*"What is time, what is space? ",Di Renzo Editore , 2006, ISBN 88-8323-146-5.External links
* [http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/ Homepage]
* Carlo Rovelli, "A Dialog on Quantum Gravity", preprint available as [http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0310077 hep-th/0310077]
* [http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-1998-1/ "Loop Quantum Gravity" by Carlo Rovelli]
* [http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/book.pdf Quantum Gravity] , draft of the book "Quantum Gravity"
* [http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/%7Erovelli/vita.pdf "Curriculum Vitae et Studiorum"]
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