Arthur Komar

Arthur Baraway Komar (March 26, 1931 – June 3, 2011) known as Art Komar was an American theoretical physicist, specializing in general relativity and helping to develop the canonical approach to quantum gravity. Arthur Komar made a significant contribution to physics as an educator, research scientist, and administrator. He had wide interests in numerous other subjects, and his friends knew him as a Renaissance man. The terms Komar mass and Komar superpotential are named after him.

Life and education Arthur "Artie" Komar attended Midwood High School in Brooklyn, where he was a capable student and chose to specialize in physics before going on to study physics at Princeton on a Hibben scholarship in 1948. While there, he wrote for Nassau literary magazine, was a four-year member of the Whig-Clio senate, and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the end of his junior year, graduating in 1952 and with an undergraduate thesis reviewing the classical electron. Komar went on to do his PhD at Princeton under the direction of John Archibald Wheeler, which he received in 1956 for a thesis entitled, Some Consequences of Mach's Principle for General Relativity.

After graduating, Komar and his wife moved for one year to the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen, where he was a Fellow of the American-Scandinavian Foundation. The family's first child was born in 1957, a son, and soon after they moved so Komar could join Syracuse University. Komar became chair of the physics department in Yeshiva from 1978 to 1982 and chairman of the Division of Natural Science from 1983 to 1986. He also served as a physics program director at the National Science Foundation, Komar was a consultant for the LIGO project from 1991 to 1992.

Research

Komar's interests in physics ranged over numerous fundamental and applied concepts, including conserved quantities, space and time, and thermodynamics. Notably he pursued the problem of observables in general relativity and in quantum theory.

It is said that John Wheeler arranged a tea-time visit for his class, which to Arthur's pleasure had the company of Albert Einstein. This approach is notable for its use of Weyl curvature scalars to determine a time-dependent gauge fixing.

Komar also worked on the problem of invariants in general relativistic spacetimes, now known as Komar-invariants or Bergmann-Komar invariants.

Komar is also known for formulating the concept of Komar mass and Komar superpotential.

Selected works Physics Quantum theory and relativistic theory

Conserved quantities and laws in general relativity

Observables in general relativity

Singularities in general relativity