- Howard Percy Robertson
Howard Percy Robertson (
January 27 ,1903 –August 26 ,1961 ) was an Americanmathematician andphysicist known for contributions related tophysical cosmology and theuncertainty principle . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences .cite web | title = MacTutor History of Mathematics: Howard Percy Robertson | date = November, 2006 | url = http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Printonly/Robertson.html | accessdate = 2007-12-28 ]Biography
Robertson was born in
Hoquiam , Washington and earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1922 and a master’s in mathematics and physics in 1923 from theUniversity of Washington inSeattle . He completed his PhD atCaltech in mathematics and physics in 1925 underHarry Bateman , with the dissertation, “On Dynamical Space-Times Which Contain a Conformal Euclidean 3-Space”. cite web | title = The Archives Of The California Institute Of Technology: The Papers Of H. P. Robertson | date = July, 2002 | url = http://findingaids.library.caltech.edu/14/01/Papers_of_H_P_Robertson.pdf
pages = p. iii | accessdate = 2007-12-28 ]Upon receipt of his doctorate, Robertson received a National Research Council Fellowship to study at the
Georg-August University of Göttingen , theLudwig Maximilians University of Munich , andPrinceton University . At Munich, he was a postdoctoral student ofArnold Sommerfeld . [ I. I. Rabi, translated and edited by R. Fraser Code "Stories from the early days of quantum mechanics", "Physics Today" (8) 36-41 (2006) p. 38.]One of Robertson's first landmark papers, a brief note in "The Annals of Mathematics", series II, Vol 39, pp 101-104 (1938) entitled "Note on the preceding paper: The two body problem in general relativity" solved that problem within a degree of approximation not improved on for several decades. Earlier work, such as the
Schwarzschild metric , were for a central body that did not move, while Robertson's solution considered two bodies orbiting each other. Nevertheless, his solution failed to includegravitational radiation , so the bodies orbit forever, rather than approaching each other.Aside from his work in physics, Robertson played a central role in American scientific intelligence during and after World War II. During the war years, Robertson was Chief American Liaison with British Scientific Intelligence, when he became close friends with Dr.
Reginald Victor Jones . Following the war, Robertson was a CIA classified employee and director of the Weapons System Evaluation Group in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.In 1953, Robertson chaired an influential CIA committee which reviewed several well-publicized reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and recommended a domestic information program designed to reduce public interest in UFOs via a covert, mass-media program of "training and debunking." This committee is now known as the
Robertson Panel .Although the CIA's official history suggests the Robertson Panel's recommendations were never carried out, a personal letter by a panel member, Dr. Thorton Page, contradicts this version of events. Page confided in a 1966 letter to panel secretary Fred Durant that he had "helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions." Page was no doubt referring to the CBS TV broadcast of the same year, "UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy?," narrated by
Walter Cronkite . In keeping with the Robertson Panel's recommendations, the CBS broadcast argued, using selective and often false information, that UFOs were all due to mistaken perceptions. Thus, the Robertson Panel's recommendations were covertly influencing U.S. news coverage of UFOs for at least 13 years after the committee first met. POV-statement|date=December 2007Notions named for Howard Percy Robertson
*
Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric
*Poynting-Robertson effect
*Robertson-Schrödinger relationources
* [http://turnbull.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Printonly/Robertson.html Howard Percy Robertson biographical sketch]
*Terry Hansen, "The Missing Times: News media complicity in the UFO cover-up," 2000, ISBN 0-7388-3612-5External links
* [http://findingaids.library.caltech.edu/14/01/Papers_of_H_P_Robertson.pdf Robertson] – The Papers of H. P. Robertson
Notes
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