Matthew Choptuik
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Matthew William Choptuik (born 1961) is a Canadian theoretical physicist specializing in numerical relativity.
Choptuik graduated from University of British Columbia with a master's degree in 1982 and a Ph.D. advised by William Unruh in 1986. He became an associate professor in 1995 at the University of Texas at Austin. In 1999 he became a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and in the same year he became a professor at University of British Columbia.
In 1993,cite-ref-1[1] he discovered critical phenomena in gravitational collapsecite-ref-2[2] via numerical studies. He showed—under non-generic initial conditions cite-ref-3[3]—the possibility of the occurrence of naked singularity in general relativity with scalar matter. This had previously been the subject of a bet between Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne and John Preskill. Hawking lost the bet after Choptuik's publication, but renewed it under non-generic initial conditions.cite-ref-4[4]
Choptuik was the 2001 awardee of the Rutherford Memorial Medal. In 2003 he received the CAP-CRM Prize in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics. In 2003 he became a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2002, he became an honorary doctor of Brandon University.
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References
cite-note-33. ↑ Only with precise fine tuning of the initial conditions, which is lost even with small perturbations
cite-note-44. ↑ citerefcrenson1997Crenson, Matt (February 12, 1997). "The naked truth: Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking loses a bet". AP News. Archived from the original on May 12, 2019.
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