I Gravitation (MTW) Misner Thorne Wheeler - 50 years (RIP) C.W.Misner

[robphy]

TL;DR Summary

The International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (http://www.isgrg.org/)
celebrates the 50-year anniversary of Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.
Misner died in 2023... I included some associated links.

From the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (http://www.isgrg.org/)

there were some 50-year anniversary celebrations and a 100th birthday celebration:
This post is primarily about items related to "Gravitation" by Misner Thorne Wheeler.

• Go to ISGRG to see
  • a 50-year anniversary celebration for "The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time" by Hawking and Ellis ( video ) - G. Ellis and A. Ashtekar
  • a 100th-birthday celebration for Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat [birthday today Dec 29, 2023] ( conference intro ; https://www.esi.ac.at/events/e526/ links to videos)

• ---

  Gravitation (MTW) Misner Thorne Wheeler [on May 3, 2023] - 50 year anniversary
  
  0:00:00 Emanuele Berti's introductions
  0:04:42 David Kaiser's presentation (slides http://www.isgrg.org/Kaiser.MTW(May2023).pdf)
  0:23:39 Kip Thorne's presentation (slides http://www.isgrg.org/KipSlides.pdf)
  1:09:05 Charles Misner's remarks
  1:18:01 Q&A
  

• ---

  (Not associated with ISGRG...)
  
  Charles W Misner passed away on July 24, 2023.
  https://umdphysics.umd.edu/about-us/news/department-news/1893-misner.html
  
  https://umdphysics.umd.edu/misnersymposium.html
• Misner Symposium Kip Thorne - The Huge Impact that Charlie and His Students Have Had on Me (slides)
• Misner Symposium Ted Jacobson - Charlie Misner and the "beauty and intelligibility of the universe" (slides)
• Misner Symposium Remarks and Reminiscences pt. 1- (@0s) Tim Misner, (@2m42s) Bei-Lok Hu, (@14m41s) Neil Comins, (@22m20s) Jim Isenberg, (@29m05s) Jim Nester, (@31m11) Chris Stephens
  Misner Symposium Remarks and Reminiscences pt. 2 - (@0m30s) Les Fishbone, (@11m45s) Bob Wald, (@16m13s) Frank Tipler, and (@26m25s) Philip Yasskin, others from UMD, (@1h04m42s) Ted Jacobson
• 16. Ch. Misner - Puzzle Pieces Do any fit?
  Hawking Radiation Conference | August 2015
  
  
  http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~misner/cwmpubs.pdf
  https://history.aip.org/phn/11607002.html
  
  unofficial lists:
  https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/C.-Misner/69873830
  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Charles-W-Misner-2
  
  Misner on Wheeler (Erice, 2006) (slides)
  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300000788_Erice_MisnerOnWheeler_--_slides

• ---

  (Not associated with ISGRG...)
  
  John A Wheeler passed away on April 13, 2008
  John Wheeler - Origins of the book 'Gravitation' with Thorne and Misner (96/130) [view on YouTube to see the entire playlist]
  
  
  J.A. Wheeler Mathematics Genealogy
  J.A. Wheeler Academic Tree
  
  https://history.aip.org/phn/11503001.html
  https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/graphics/john-archibald-wheeler-papers-1880-2008
  https://diglib.amphilsoc.org/islandora/graphics/relativity-notebooks-1952-1973

 

[bob012345]

Yes, the book continues to bend spacetime on my bookshelf.

 

[Hill]

Yes, the book continues to bend spacetime on my bookshelf.

I got tired of that and gave myself New Year's present, the Kindle version.

 

[bob012345]

I got tired of that and gave myself New Year's present, the Kindle version.

Either way, reading it is like getting sucked into a black hole.

 

[Hill]

Either way, reading it is like getting sucked into a black hole.

Judging by the time it takes to get to the singularity, it is really super-supermassive black hole.

 

[Nugatory]

Yes, the book continues to bend spacetime on my bookshelf.

I bought my copy while still in college, 1978 or thereabouts. My roommate looked at it sitting on the table, picked it up, set it down again, then said "How convenient - all the theory and also a practical demonstration".

 

[PAllen]

The joke I heard was that MTW shows the violation of the equivalence principle - it falls faster than everything else.

 

[jedishrfu]

Being late to the party here, my first experience with MTW was also in college during an independent study where my professor got a preprint of the book. I think it was in 1973 spring term. I was excited and mesmerized by the pictures of differential geometry.

One thing that fascinated me was the concept of geons—self-gravitating bundles of light that could form a donut-shaped structure orbiting in a region of empty space and held together by its own gravitational field. Later, I learned that geons could also be gravitational waves with a similar configuration. Perhaps, one day, these will be found in nature too.

Of course, when it was officially released in September 1973, I had to get my own copy, which I still have. When the new edition was released, I acquired that as well and gave the somewhat moldy old one to my brother.

My only disappointment with the new edition was that it didn't update the text; instead, it added a preface by Professor Thorne explaining the chapters, which were now out of date.

Sadly, I was never able to master differential forms at the time, being an overworked undergrad commuter student (with courses and a 20-hour-per-week part-time job). Still, now in my twilight years, I have a better understanding through the more modern geometric calculus approach of Hestenes.

 

[pervect]

I got tired of that and gave myself New Year's present, the Kindle version.

Can you really read the formulae and the diagrams on the Kindle version? I would think it'd be tough to get much out of it :(.

 

[jedishrfu]

I don't know about the MTW book on a Kindle, but I have a graduate math book that renders terribly on a Kindle, as all equations and text are unzoomable via pinching.

Equations are rendered as images, not from LaTeX. However, Kindle will zoom when you click on the equations to display them separately from the text but that's about it.