Jennie Traschen

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Jennie Harriet Traschen is an American physicist and cosmologist whose research concerns the structure of the early universe, inflation, black holes and black hole thermodynamics, and quantum gravity. She is a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Education and career[]

Traschen took three years to graduate from Averill Park High School in Rensselaer, New York, in 1974. She went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with the support of a National Merit Scholarship and New York State Regent's Scholarship,[1] graduating in 1977.[2]

She traveled to the University of Cambridge on a Churchill Scholarship for the Mathematical Tripos, and earned a master's degree there. She returned to the US for doctoral study in general relativity at Harvard University, earning her Ph.D. in 1984.[2]

She became a faculty member at Amherst after postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and University of California, Santa Barbara.[2]

Research[]

Traschen's research has included work with Robert Geroch critiquing certain approximations used in string theory[3] and defining a "maximally reasonable" class of Pseudo-Riemannian manifolds called the Geroch–Traschen metrics.[4]

In black hole cosmology, Traschen is known for her work with David Kastor on multi-black-hole solutions to the equations of general relativity.[5]

She is also known for her work in cosmological perturbation theory, on integral constraint vectors of spacelike hypersurfaces.[6][7]

Professional recognition[]

In 2006, Traschen was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Gravitational Physics, "for her ground-breaking contributions to early universe cosmology and black hole physics".[8]

Political activism[]

In 2001, Traschen became infamous nationally for her suggestion at a meeting of the Amherst, Massachusetts select board that money from a fund for veteran services that had been used to purchase US flags would have been better spent on education and health care for veterans.[9][10] The unfortunate timing of her remarks, the day before the September 11 attacks, and the inflammatory wording of her statement, led her to become a national "target of harassment and hate".[10]

Traschen has also worked to encourage more women to enter theoretical physics, by organizing workshops aimed at greater inclusiveness[11] and decrying the phenomenon in which some contributors to joint research are seen as invisible or negligible and excluded from recognition.[2][11]

Family and personal life[]

Traschen is the daughter of Isadore "Ike" Traschen,[1] a professor of literature at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a leader in protests against the Vietnam War at Rensselaer.[12] She is married to David Kastor, also a physicist at UMass Amherst. Their daughter, Kalyani Kastor,[13] is a professional illustrator.[14]

References[]

  1. ^ a b "Averill Park Student Wins High Honors", Times Record (Troy, New York), p. 42, April 3, 1974 – via Newspapers.com
  2. ^ a b c d "Jennie Traschen, Ph.D., Harvard University (1984)", Physics Spotlight, UMass Amherst Department of Physics, November 2015, retrieved 2020-07-18
  3. ^ Anderson, Malcolm R. (2015), "7.3 The Geroch–Traschen critique", The Mathematical Theory of Cosmic Strings: Cosmic Strings in the Wire Approximation, Series in High Energy Physics, Cosmology and Gravitation, CRC Press, pp. 252–255, ISBN 9781420033366
  4. ^ Steinbauer, R.; Vickers, J. A. (February 2009), "On the Geroch–Traschen class of metrics" (PDF), Classical and Quantum Gravity, 26 (6): 065001, arXiv:0811.1376, Bibcode:2009CQGra..26f5001S, doi:10.1088/0264-9381/26/6/065001, S2CID 17556918
  5. ^ See, e.g.:
  6. ^ Tod, K. P. (December 1988), "The integral constraint vectors of Traschen and three-surface twistors", General Relativity and Gravitation, 20 (12): 1297–1308, Bibcode:1988GReGr..20.1297T, doi:10.1007/bf00756055, S2CID 121487436
  7. ^ Perlick, Volker (August 1998), "Book review: Gravitation and Cosmology", General Relativity and Gravitation, 30 (8): 1293–1295, doi:10.1023/a:1026659331443, S2CID 118311083
  8. ^ APS Fellows Nominated by DGRAV: 2006, APS Division of Gravitational Physics, retrieved 2020-07-18
  9. ^ "Amherst, Massachusetts Battles Over Flag-Flying", CNN Sunday Morning, CNN, October 14, 2001
  10. ^ a b Guidera, Jerry; Tomsho, Robert (October 2, 2001), "How Words Spoken on Sept. 10 Came Back to Haunt the Speaker", The Wall Street Journal
  11. ^ a b Science Scene: Cosmological spacetime, 'dark energy', and women in physics; Physicist Jennie Traschen helps diversify her field on an international stage, UMass Amherst College of Natural Sciences, November 9, 2018, retrieved 2020-07-18
  12. ^ "Looking back", Laredo Morning Times, January 5, 2018
  13. ^ "Susan Kastor", Amherst Bulletin, May 2015
  14. ^ Kastor, Kalyani, About me, retrieved 2020-07-18

External links[]

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