Paul Davies

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For other persons named Paul Davies, see Paul Davies (disambiguation).
Paul C. W. Davies
Paul Davies September 2006
Paul Davies September 2006
Born 22 April 1946 (1946-04-22) (age 63)
London, UK
Residence UK
Australia
USA
Citizenship British
Nationality United Kingdom
Ethnicity English
Fields Physicist
Institutions Arizona State University
University of Cambridge
University of Adelaide
Macquarie University
University of Newcastle
Alma mater University College London
Doctoral advisor Michael J. Seaton
Sigurd Zienau
Other academic advisors Fred Hoyle
Doctoral students Nicholas Birrell
Edmund Copeland
Kerry Hinton
Don Koks
Andrew Matacz
William Walker
Known for Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect
Bunch-Davies vacuum state
Notable awards Kelvin Medal (2001)
Faraday Prize (2002)
Templeton Prize (1995)
Religious stance His position is "undecided". His writings are technically agnostic, non-Platonistic, with a leaning towards minimalistic Deism.

Paul Charles William Davies AM (born 22 April 1946) is a English physicist, writer and broadcaster, currently a professor at Arizona State University as well as the Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He has held previous academic appointments at the University of Cambridge, University of London, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, University of Adelaide and Macquarie University. His research interests are in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory, and astrobiology. He has proposed that a one-way trip to Mars could be a viable option.

In 2005, he took up the chair of the SETI: Post-Detection Science and Technology Taskgroup of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Contents

[edit] Education

In 1970, he completed his PhD entitled Contributions to Theoretical Physics: (i) Radiation Damping in the Optical Continuum (ii) A Quantum Theory of Wheeler-Feynman Electrodynamics under Michael J. Seaton and Sigurd Zienau at University College London. He then was a postdoc under Fred Hoyle at the University of Cambridge.

[edit] Scientific research

Davies's inquiries have included theoretical physics, cosmology, and astrobiology; his research has been mainly in the area of quantum field theory in curved spacetime. Notable contributions are the so-called Fulling-Davies-Unruh effect, according to which an observer accelerating through empty space will perceive a bath of thermal radiation, and the Bunch-Davies vacuum state, often used as the basis for explaining the fluctuations in the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang. A paper co-authored with Stephen Fulling and William Unruh was the first to suggest that black holes evaporating via the Hawking effect lose mass as a result of a flux of negative energy streaming into the hole from the surrounding space. Davies has had a longstanding association with the problem of time’s arrow, and was also a forerunner of the theory that life on Earth may have come from Mars cocooned in rocks ejected by asteroid and comet impacts. During his time in Australia he helped establish the Australian Centre for Astrobiology.

[edit] Books

He has produced over twenty books, including:

[edit] Essays and papers

"What Happened Before the Big Bang?" in God for the 21st Century, Russell Stannard ed., Templeton Foundation Press, 2000, ISBN 1890151394

[edit] Awards

Davies' talent as a communicator of science has been recognized in Australia by an Advance Australia Award and two Eureka Prizes, and in the UK by the 2001 Kelvin Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics, and the 2002 Faraday Prize by The Royal Society. Davies received the Templeton Prize in 1995.

Davies was made a member of the Order of Australia in the 2007 Queen's birthday honours list

[edit] Media activity

Davies writes and comments on scientific and philosophical issues. He made a documentary series for BBC Radio 3, and two Australian television series, The Big Questions and More Big Questions. His BBC documentary ‘The Cradle of Life’ featured the subject of his Faraday Prize lecture. He writes regularly for newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has been guest on numerous radio and television programs including the children podcast program Ask A Biologist.

[edit] Davies in popular culture


[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ The AMS collaboration data base (corroborated by Jerry Grossman, 2007, private communication) lists this path: Borosh, I.; Chui, C. K.; Erdos, P. On changes of signs in infinite series. (Russian summary) Anal. Math. 4 (1978), no. 1, 3–12. \rightarrow Fulling, Stephen A.(1-TXAM); Borosh, Itshak(1-TXAM); da Conturbia, Andrea(1-TXAM) Cataloguing general graphs by point and line spectra. (English summary) Comput. Phys. Comm. 115 (1998), no. 2-3, 93–112. \rightarrow Davies, P. C. W.; Fulling, S. A.; Christensen, S. M.; Bunch, T. S. Energy-momentum tensor of a massless scalar quantum field in a Robertson-Walker universe. Ann. Physics 109 (1977), no. 1, 108–142.

[edit] Davies videos

[edit] External links

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Templeton Prize laureates

Mother Teresa (1973) • Frère Roger (1974) • Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1975) • Leo Joseph Suenens (1976) • Chiara Lubich (1977) • Thomas Torrance (1978) • Nikkyo Niwano (1979) • Ralph Wendell Burhoe (1980) • Cicely Saunders (1981) • Billy Graham (1982) • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1983) • Michael Bourdeaux (1984) • Alister Hardy (1985) • James I. McCord (1986) • Stanley Jaki (1987) • Inamullah Khan (1988) • Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker & George MacLeod (1989) • Baba Amte & Charles Birch (1990) • Immanuel Jakobovits (1991) • Kyung-Chik Han (1992) • Charles Colson (1993) • Michael Novak (1994) • Paul Davies (1995) • Bill Bright (1996) • Pandurang Shastri Athavale (1997) • Sigmund Sternberg (1998) • Ian Barbour (1999) • Freeman Dyson (2000) • Arthur Peacocke (2001) • John Polkinghorne (2002) • Holmes Rolston III (2003) • George Ellis (2004) • Charles Townes (2005) • John D. Barrow (2006) • Charles Taylor (2007) • Michał Heller (2008) • Bernard d'Espagnat (2009)


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