On Wednesday 10^th of May SUSTech students and staff had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Sergiu Klainerman from Princeton University, who came to give a lecture on the mathematical reality of black holes. According to him, black holes cannot be real, physically, if they fail three important mathematical tests concerning their rigidity, stability and the possibility that they can form, in the first place, from regular initial configurations – i.e the problem of Collapse. He started off the talk with some of the basic mathematical equations and spatial concepts that he used in his lecture for the audience, before going on to discuss the status of the theory of black holes in connection to these three fundamental problems.

After his talk, members of the audience were offered the chance to ask Professor Klainerman their questions, which he took the time to answer individually.

Finally SUSTech vice-president of research and Dean of Graduate School Tang Tao gave the professor a certificate from the university as a token of his appreciation for his visit and for his research.   

Background information:

Professor Sergiu Klainerman is known for his contributions to hyperbolic partial differential equations and general relativity. He was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1950, received his PHD from New York University and became a Miller Fellow at Berkeley from 1978 to 1980. He was then assistant, associate, and full professor at New York University from 1980 to 1987, and since 1987, he has been a full professor at Princeton. Professor Klainerman is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1995 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 1997. He was awarded the Bôcher Memorial Prize by the American Mathematical Society in 1999.

Written and edited by: Jeremy Welburn