RIP Andrzej Trautman (1933 - 2026), relativity and gravitational waves

[robphy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Trautman

http://ktwig.fuw.edu.pl/1,1,7,p-40,prof-andrzej-trautman.html
https://trautman.fuw.edu.pl/ (has links to many papers... see below)

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https://www.ego-gw.it/blog/2026/03/03/goodbye-andrzej-trautman/
ligo_virgo (instagram) - We pay tribute to Andrzej Trautman, one of the pioneers of gravitational wave theory

Goodbye Andrzej Trautman
Mar 3, 2026

We are deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Andrzej Trautman, one of the pioneers of gravitational wave theory and a leading figure in mathematical relativity, who died on February 27, 2026 at the age of 93.

In 1958, as a young scientist, he demonstrated that gravitational waves are not merely mathematical artifacts of Einstein’s equations, but real physical phenomena capable of carrying energy and information. These works, later complemented by the famous Robinson-Trautman solutions describing radiating gravitational waves, became one of the essential theoretical foundations that later enabled the development of gravitational-wave detectors such as LIGO and Virgo, ultimately leading to the historic first detection of gravitational waves.

https://potor.fuw.edu.pl/en/2026/03/01/passing-of-prof-andrzej-trautman/

Passing of Prof. Andrzej Trautman

It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of Professor Andrzej Trautman on February 27, 2026 – an outstanding Polish theoretical and mathematical physicist, Emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, and one of the founders of modern gravitational theory.

Prof. Trautman was among the most distinguished Polish scholars working in general relativity. Throughout his scientific career, he combined physics with the deepest structures of mathematics. In the 1960s, he demonstrated that gravitational waves are not merely formal solutions of Einstein’s equations but genuine physical phenomena capable of carrying energy and information. His work, including the renowned Robinson–Trautman solutions, became one of the key theoretical foundations for the later experimental detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO and VIRGO collaborations.

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"Memories of my early career in relativity physics"
Andrzej Trautman, Donald Salisbury
https://arxiv.org/abs/1909.12165

The text presented here and revised by the authors is based on the original oral history interview by Donald Salisbury with Andrzej Trautman recorded in Warsaw on June 24 and June 28, 2016.

(2013) THEORY OF RELATIVITY. Its Origin and Early Reception.
Original language in Polish (On the YouTube site, a setting can activate "Auto-dubbed")


(2011) Prof. Andrzej Trautman - O tym, dlaczego nauka nie zastąpi religii
Prof. Andrzej Trautman - On why science will not replace religion (Google Translated)


(2020) Prof. Trautman - he proved the existence of gravitational waves (title Google-translated)
Prof. Trautman - to on udowodnił istnienie fal grawitacyjnych - Science. I like it
(interview in Polish)


(2021) Gravitational Wave Pioneer - Urania TV #42

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https://mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=51269
https://inspirehep.net/authors/985720
https://zbmath.org/authors/?q=ai:trautman.andrzej


https://trautman.fuw.edu.pl/publications/scientific-articles.html

• "Radiation and boundary conditions in the theory of gravitation" Bull. Acad. Polon. Sci., ser. sci. math., astr. et phys. 6, 407–412 (1958)
• (with I. Robinson) "Spherical gravitational waves", Phys. Rev. Lett. 4, 431–432 (1960)
  (with I. Robinson) "Some spherical gravitational waves in general relativity", Proc. Roy. Soc. London A265, 463–473 (1962)
• "Fibre bundles associated with space-time", Rep. Math. Phys. (Torun) 1, 29–34 (1970)
• "Comparison of Newtonian and relativistic theories of gravitation", pp. 413–425 in: Perspectives in Geometry and Relativity, Essays in honor of V. Hlavaty, ed. by B. Hoffmann, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1966
• (with H. Bondi and F. A. E. Pirani) Lectures on General Relativity, Brandeis Summer Institute in Theoretical Physics, 1964 (vol. I), Prentice–Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1964
• Theory of gravitation, pp. 179–198 in: The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, ed. by J. Mehra, D. Reidel Publ. Co., Dordrecht, 1973
• On the Einstein–Cartan equations, Bull. Acad. Polon. Sci., ser. Sci. math., astr. et phys. 20
  Part I: 185–190, Part II: 503–506, Part III: 895–896, Part IV (1972), 21 Part IV: 345–346 (1973)
• (2017) "Gravitational Waves" Andrzej Trautman 2017 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 873 012012
  

  Historical remarks on early theoretical work on the subject. Very early on, Einstein introduced the notion of gravitational waves, but later became convinced that they did not existas a physical phenomenon. Exact solutions of Einstein’s equations representing waves were foundby a number of authors, contributing to their final acceptance as part of physics.

https://trautman.fuw.edu.pl/publications/lectures.html

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Prize of the Foundation for Polish Science (2017)

• (video) Prof. Andrzej Trautman - laureat Nagrody FNP 2017
  

  (google translate of description)
  Prof. Andrzej Trautman from the University of Warsaw received the Foundation for Polish Science Award 2017 in the field of mathematical, physical and engineering sciences for theoretically demonstrating the reality of gravitational waves.

  
  
• (video) (2018) Kip Thorne's video letter to Andrzej Trautman
  

  My dear Andrzej Trautman, I congratulate you on your extremely well-deserved Foundation for Polish Science Prize awarded to you for the theoretical demonstration of the reality of gravitational waves. I regret that due to responsibilities associated with my trip to Stockholm I can't be in Warsaw with you to celebrate but I'm very pleased that more than a half-century later at the LIGO team was able to observe directly the gravitational waves this reality you firmly foretold. Your insights in the 1950s into the physics and mathematics of gravitational waves were a foundation on which many others built. I came along 10 to 15 years later and was influenced by you...

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As a grad student interested in relativity, I was quite enlightened by
the "spacetime viewpoint" from Geroch's General Relativity from A to B
(in particular, the Aristotelian, Galilean, General-Relativity "viewpoints").
I read the book in college (assigned as optional reading for a modern physics class)
but had to re-read it again when Geroch used those ideas in his graduate level relativity class.
(I vaguely recall asking him "where he learned this stuff". He replied "His friends".)
So, I went to the library and flipped through various books.
I found Trautman's

• Theory of gravitation, pp. 179–198 in: The Physicist’s Conception of Nature, ed. by J. Mehra, D. Reidel Publ. Co., Dordrecht, 1973.

Although I didn't understand it then (and I don't understand much of the details now),
it presented to me an organized way of thinking about spacetime structure, which I would periodically revisit.

And when Malament, in his relativity class in the Dept of Philosophy, described aspects of his
geometrization of Newtonian gravitation, I found Trautman's

• "Comparison of Newtonian and relativistic theories of gravitation", pp. 413–425 in: Perspectives in Geometry and Relativity, Essays in honor of V. Hlavaty, ed. by B. Hoffmann, Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington, 1966

These works by Trautman have influenced the way I think about "spacetime structure",
especially for "spacetime trigonometry", trying to formalize the relationships
among Minkowski spacetime, Galilean spacetime, and Euclidean geometry.