Jerzy Plebanski

Jerzy Plebański was a Polish theoretical physicist and mathematician who specialized in the field of general relativity and mathematical physics. He received his Ph.D. in 1954 under the direction of Wojciech Rubinowicz at the University of Warsaw. He then worked at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the University of Warsaw, where he collaborated with Leopold Infeld on the problem of motion in general relativity. He was vice-dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Warsaw from 1958 to 1962. In 1958, he traveled to the United States, where he spent two years as an invited professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at UCLA in Los Angeles. In 1962, he moved to Mexico, where he joined the physics department of the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City. He returned to Poland in 1967 and served as vice-rector of the University of Warsaw from 1969 to 1973. He emigrated permanently to Mexico in 1973 and continued his work at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies until his death in 2005. During his stay in Mexico, he hosted many Polish physicists and maintained close contacts with the University of Warsaw. He authored many pioneering papers on general relativity and mathematical physics. His most important result was showing that all vacuum and self-dual solutions of the Einstein equations satisfy a single equation, called the "Heavenly equation". He also introduced a description of the dynamics of the gravitational field, which later proved to be useful for the attempt to quantize gravity. He wrote several books, including Motion and Relativity with Infeld, and An Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology with Andrzej Krasiński. He received several awards and honors, such as the Order of Polonia Restituta, the Medal of the National Education Commission, the Order of the Aztec Eagle, and the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. He was a professor at the University of Warsaw and the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Mexico. He was the founder and first director of the Department of Physics at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies. He died of natural causes in Mexico City on August 24, 2005, at the age of 77.