Jennie Traschen

Jennie Harriet Traschen is an American physicist and cosmologist whose research concerns the structure of the early universe, inflation, black holes and black hole thermodynamics, and quantum gravity. She is a professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Education and career

Traschen took three years to graduate from Averill Park High School in Rensselaer, New York, in 1974. She went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with the support of a National Merit Scholarship and New York State Regent's Scholarship,[1] graduating in 1977.[2]

She traveled to the University of Cambridge on a Churchill Scholarship for the Mathematical Tripos, and earned a master's degree there. She returned to the US for doctoral study in general relativity at Harvard University, earning her Ph.D. in 1984.[2]

She became a faculty member at Amherst after postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and University of California, Santa Barbara.[2]

Research

Traschen's research has included work with Robert Geroch critiquing certain approximations used in string theory[3] and defining a "maximally reasonable" class of Pseudo-Riemannian manifolds called the Geroch–Traschen metrics.[4]

In black hole cosmology, Traschen is known for her work with David Kastor on multi-black-hole solutions to the equations of general relativity.[5]

She is also known for her work in cosmological perturbation theory, on integral constraint vectors of spacelike hypersurfaces.[6][7]

Professional recognition

In 2006, Traschen was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), after a nomination from the APS Division of Gravitational Physics, "for her ground-breaking contributions to early universe cosmology and black hole physics".[8]

Political activism

In 2001, Traschen became infamous nationally for her suggestion at a meeting of the Amherst, Massachusetts select board that money from a fund for veteran services that had been used to purchase US flags would have been better spent on education and health care for veterans.[9][10] The unfortunate timing of her remarks, the day before the September 11 attacks, and the inflammatory wording of her statement, led her to become a national "target of harassment and hate".[10]

Traschen has also worked to encourage more women to enter theoretical physics, by organizing workshops aimed at greater inclusiveness[11] and decrying the phenomenon in which some contributors to joint research are seen as invisible or negligible and excluded from recognition.[2][11]

Family and personal life

Traschen is the daughter of Isadore "Ike" Traschen,[1] a professor of literature at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a leader in protests against the Vietnam War at Rensselaer.[12] She is married to David Kastor, also a physicist at UMass Amherst. Their daughter, Kalyani Kastor,[13] is a professional illustrator.[14]

References
  1. "Averill Park Student Wins High Honors", Times Record (Troy, New York), p. 42, April 3, 1974 – via Newspapers.com
  2. "Jennie Traschen, Ph.D., Harvard University (1984)", Physics Spotlight, UMass Amherst Department of Physics, November 2015, retrieved 2020-07-18
  3. Anderson, Malcolm R. (2015), "7.3 The Geroch–Traschen critique", The Mathematical Theory of Cosmic Strings: Cosmic Strings in the Wire Approximation, Series in High Energy Physics, Cosmology and Gravitation, CRC Press, pp. 252–255, ISBN 9781420033366
  4. Steinbauer, R.; Vickers, J. A. (February 2009), "On the Geroch–Traschen class of metrics" (PDF), Classical and Quantum Gravity, 26 (6): 065001, arXiv:0811.1376, Bibcode:2009CQGra..26f5001S, doi:10.1088/0264-9381/26/6/065001, S2CID 17556918
  5. See, e.g.:
  6. Tod, K. P. (December 1988), "The integral constraint vectors of Traschen and three-surface twistors", General Relativity and Gravitation, 20 (12): 1297–1308, Bibcode:1988GReGr..20.1297T, doi:10.1007/bf00756055, S2CID 121487436
  7. Perlick, Volker (August 1998), "Book review: Gravitation and Cosmology", General Relativity and Gravitation, 30 (8): 1293–1295, doi:10.1023/a:1026659331443, S2CID 118311083
  8. APS Fellows Nominated by DGRAV: 2006, APS Division of Gravitational Physics, retrieved 2020-07-18
  9. "Amherst, Massachusetts Battles Over Flag-Flying", CNN Sunday Morning, CNN, October 14, 2001
  10. Guidera, Jerry; Tomsho, Robert (October 2, 2001), "How Words Spoken on Sept. 10 Came Back to Haunt the Speaker", The Wall Street Journal
  11. Science Scene: Cosmological spacetime, 'dark energy', and women in physics; Physicist Jennie Traschen helps diversify her field on an international stage, UMass Amherst College of Natural Sciences, November 9, 2018, retrieved 2020-07-18
  12. "Looking back", Laredo Morning Times, January 5, 2018
  13. "Susan Kastor", Amherst Bulletin, May 2015
  14. Kastor, Kalyani, About me, retrieved 2020-07-18
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