James M. Bardeen

James M. Bardeen
Bardeen in 1980
Born	James Maxwell Bardeen May 9, 1939 Minneapolis, Minnesota,U.S.
Died	June 20, 2022(2022-06-20)(aged 83) Seattle, Washington,U.S.
Education	Harvard University(BS) California Institute of Technology(PhD)
Known for	Laws of black hole thermodynamics
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	University of Washington Perimeter Institute
Doctoral advisor	Richard P. Feynman William A. Fowler

James Maxwell Bardeen(May 9, 1939 – June 20, 2022) was an American physicist, well known for his work ingeneral relativity,particularly his role in formulating thelaws of black hole mechanics.He also discovered the Bardeen vacuum, anexact solutionof theEinstein field equation.

Early life and education

Bardeen was born inMinneapolis,Minnesota,on May 9, 1939.His father,John Bardeen,won theNobel Prize in Physicstwice for inventing the transistor and formulating the theory of superconductivity;his mother, Jane Maxwell Bardeen, worked as a zoologist and a high school teacher. During his childhood, Bardeen resided inWashington, D.C.,Summit, New Jersey,andChicagoas part of his father's employment. He attended theUniversity Laboratory High Schoolin Urbana, Illinois. He then studied physics atHarvard University,even though his father wanted him to go into biology.After graduating in 1960, he undertookgraduate studiesat theCalifornia Institute of Technologyunder the direction ofRichard FeynmanandWilliam Alfred Fowler.Bardeen was awarded aDoctor of Philosophyin 1965.

Career

Bardeen first worked at Caltech and theUniversity of California, Berkeley,in postdoctoral positions. He became a part of the astronomy department of theUniversity of Washingtonin 1967. He subsequently joinedYale Universityin 1972. That same year, he co-authored the watershed paper "The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics" withStephen HawkingandBrandon Carterduring a meeting held at theÉcole de physique des Houches.Later that year, Bardeen theorized the doughnut-shape and size of a black hole’s "shadow", which was later popularized by the observations ofMessier 87by theEvent Horizon Telescope.

Bardeen returned to the University of Washington in 1976, remaining there until his retirement in 2006. Together withMichael S. TurnerandPaul Steinhardt,he published a paper in 1982 detailing the way submicroscopic fluctuations in the density of matter and energy in theearly universewould bring about the arrangement of galaxies seen in the present day.Bardeen was also a Distinguished Visiting Research FellowatPerimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.In 2012, he was elected to the U.S.National Academy of Sciences.

Personal life

Bardeen married Nancy Thomas in 1968. They met the year before inPariswhile he was attending a conference, and remained married until his death. Together, they had two children, William and David.

Bardeen's brother,William A. Bardeen,was also a physicist.His sister, Elizabeth, was married toThomas Greytak,a physicist atMIT.In a 2020 interview given toFederal University of Paráin Brazil, Bardeen recalls his journey as a physicist, his father's influences on him, his experiences as a doctoral student of Richard Feynman, and working withStephen Hawking.

Bardeen died on June 20, 2022, at a retirement home inSeattle.He was 83, and suffered from cancer prior to his death.

See also

• Bardeen–Petterson effect
• Cosmological perturbation theory
• Post-Newtonian expansion

External links

• James Bardeen, Perimeter Institute homepage
• Publications of James Maxwell Bardeenin theSPIRESdatabase
• arXiv.org preprints for J. Bardeen
• Search on author James BardeenfromGoogle Scholar