Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat

In A Lady Mathematician, the distinguished mathematician and physicist, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, at the urging of her children, recounts and reflects upon various key events and people from her life — first childhood memories of France, then schooling, followed by graduate studies, and finally her continuous research in the mathematics of General Relativity and other fundamental physical fields. She recalls conversations, collaborations and even arguments shared with many great scientists, including her experiences with Albert Einstein. She also describes some of her numerous trips around the world, spurred by a passion for travel, beauty and mathematics. At once reflective, enlightening and bittersweet, this book allows readers a look into the life and thought processes of an esteemed female academic.

Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat is a mathematician and physician. Her area of research is at the very frontier between mathematics and physics. She has created new mathematical methods that have provided a solid basis for the study of several physical theories: the theory of general relativity, relativistic hydrodynamics, non-abelian gauge theory, supergravity theory, etc.- Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat is an exceptional mathematician, internationally recognised for creating new mathematical methods which have provided a solid basis for the study of several physical theories.- Her researches cover a wide range of knowledge, from the first mathematical proof of the existence of solutions to Einstein's relativity theory of gravitation to a study of the conversion of electromagnetic waves into gravitational waves (or the inverse) in proximity to a black hole." As soon as my sense of reasoning awakened, I wanted to understand something of this strange universe where we live, and what human beings do with it - especially me. I have flirted with various areas of knowledge: natural sciences, physics, history, philosophy. Finally, I became I finally became a mathematician working on the problems created by physics. As every scientist has found, any discovery - even a tiny one - is always a great joy, like discovering uncharted land."

This is an open access title. It is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence. It is available to read and download as a PDF version on the Oxford Academic platform. General Relativity is a beautiful geometric theory, simple in its mathematical formulation but leading to numerous consequences with striking physical interpretations: gravitational waves, black holes, cosmological models, and so on. This introductory textbook is written for mathematics students interested in physics and physics students interested in exact mathematical formulations (or for anyone with a scientific mind who is curious to know more of the world we live in), recent remarkable experimental and observational results which confirm the theory are clearly described and no specialised physics knowledge is required. The mathematical level of Part A is aimed at undergraduate students and could be the basis for a course on General Relativity. Part B is more advanced, but still does not require sophisticated mathematics. Based on Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat's more advanced text, General Relativity and the Einstein Equations, the aim of this book is to give with precision, but as simply as possible, the foundations and main consequences of General Relativity. The first five chapters from General Relativity and the Einstein Equations have been updated with new sections and chapters on black holes, gravitational waves, singularities, and the Reissner-Nordström and interior Schwarzchild solutions. The rigour behind this book will provide readers with the perfect preparation to follow the great mathematical progress in the actual development, as well as the ability to model, the latest astrophysical and cosmological observations. The book presents basic General Relativity and provides a basis for understanding and using the fundamental theory.

This is an open access title. It is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence. It is available to read and download as a PDF version on the Oxford Academic platform. General Relativity is a beautiful geometric theory, simple in its mathematical formulation but leading to numerous consequences with striking physical interpretations: gravitational waves, black holes, cosmological models, and so on. This introductory textbook is written for mathematics students interested in physics and physics students interested in exact mathematical formulations (or for anyone with a scientific mind who is curious to know more of the world we live in), recent remarkable experimental and observational results which confirm the theory are clearly described and no specialised physics knowledge is required. The mathematical level of Part A is aimed at undergraduate students and could be the basis for a course on General Relativity. Part B is more advanced, but still does not require sophisticated mathematics. Based on Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat's more advanced text, General Relativity and the Einstein Equations, the aim of this book is to give with precision, but as simply as possible, the foundations and main consequences of General Relativity. The first five chapters from General Relativity and the Einstein Equations have been updated with new sections and chapters on black holes, gravitational waves, singularities, and the Reissner-Nordström and interior Schwarzchild solutions. The rigour behind this book will provide readers with the perfect preparation to follow the great mathematical progress in the actual development, as well as the ability to model, the latest astrophysical and cosmological observations. The book presents basic General Relativity and provides a basis for understanding and using the fundamental theory.

General Relativity has passed all experimental and observational tests to model the motion of isolated bodies with strong gravitational fields, though the mathematical and numerical study of these motions is still in its infancy. It is believed that General Relativity models our cosmos, with a manifold of dimensions possibly greater than four and debatable topology opening a vast field of investigation for mathematicians and physicists alike. Remarkable conjectures have been proposed, many results have been obtained but many fundamental questions remain open. In this monograph, aimed at researchers in mathematics and physics, the author overviews the basic ideas in General Relativity, introduces the necessary mathematics and discusses some of the key open questions in the field.

This reference book, which has found wide use as a text, provides an answer to the needs of graduate physical mathematics students and their teachers. The present edition is a thorough revision of the first, including a new chapter entitled ``Connections on Principle Fibre Bundles'' which includes sections on holonomy, characteristic classes, invariant curvature integrals and problems on the geometry of gauge fields, monopoles, instantons, spin structure and spin connections. Many paragraphs have been rewritten, and examples and exercises added to ease the study of several chapters. The index includes over 130 entries.