Biography:Myron Mathisson

Myron Mathisson
Born	Myron Mathisson (1897-12-04)4 December 1897 Warsaw, Poland
Died	13 September 1940(1940-09-13) (aged 42) Cambridge, United Kingdom
Known for	Mathisson–Papapetrou–Dixon equations
Scientific career
Fields	Theoretical Physics General relativity Hebrew translator Engineer
Institutions	University of Kazan University of Warsaw Jagiellonian University

Myron Mathisson (4 December 1897 – 13 September 1940) was a Polish theoretical physicist who made early contributions to the theory of general relativity, particularly in the motion of spinning bodies and the analysis of hyperbolic partial differential equations. His work on the equations of motion for extended bodies influenced later formulations such as the Mathisson–Papapetrou–Dixon equations, and he made progress on aspects of the Hadamard conjecture in specific cases.

Life and work

Education

Mathisson was born in Warsaw, 4 December 1897. In 1915, Mathisson completed his secondary education at a philological gymnasium in Warsaw, graduating with a gold medal, a distinction awarded for academic excellence. He began his studies at the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Warsaw University of Technology. Then, from 1917 he studied at the University of Warsaw where he graduated in 1924 under the guidance of Czesław Białobrzeski.

Military service

Between the years 1918–1919 he served in the military.

Physics research

In 1930, earned his doctorate at the University of Warsaw on the work of Sur le movement tournant d'un corps dans un champ de gravitation, and began to live there in 1932. He became a professor at the University of Kazan in 1936. The following year, he returned to Warsaw. In the years 1937–1939, he worked at the Jagiellonian University, under Jan Weyssenhoff.

Mathisson corresponded with Albert Einstein on theoretical aspects of relativity, as documented in archival correspondence. Niels Bohr invited him to Copenhagen. During his career he also interacted with Jacques Hadamard in Paris in 1939 and with Paul Dirac in Cambridge, England. Later, Dirac arranged for the posthumous publication of some of his work and wrote an obituary in Nature.

In chronological order; M. Mathisson, A. Papapetrou, and W. G. Dixon contributed to the derivation of the equations for a spinning body moving in a gravitational field, now known as the Mathisson–Papapetrou–Dixon equations.

Other work

Due to financial difficulties, Mathisson had to work as a Hebrew translator, as a draftsman producing technical drawings, and engineering calculations of the statics of reinforced concrete structures.

Mathisson died of tuberculosis in Cambridge, on 13 September 1940.

Publications

During his short lifetime, he published the following 12 scientific papers:

•   (1931). "Die Beharrungsgesetze in der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" (in de). Zeitschrift für Physik 67 (3–4): 270–277. doi:10.1007/BF01394605. Bibcode: 1931ZPhy...67..270M. 
•   (1931). "Die Mechanik des Materieteilchens in der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie" (in de). Zeitschrift für Physik 67 (11–12): 826–844. doi:10.1007/BF01390764. Bibcode: 1931ZPhy...67..826M. 
•   (1931). "Bewegungsproblem in der Physik und Elektronenkonstanten" (in de). Zeitschrift für Physik 69 (5–6): 389–408. doi:10.1007/BF01391361. Bibcode: 1931ZPhy...69..389M. 
•   (1933). "Eine Lösungsmethode für Differentialgleichungen vom normalen hyperbolischen Typus" (in de). Mathematische Annalen 107 (1): 400–419. doi:10.1007/BF01448901. 
•   (1933). "Eine neue Integrationsmethode für Differentialgleichungen von normalem hyperbolischem Typus" (in de). Mathematische Annalen 107 (1): 648. doi:10.1007/BF01448913. 
•   (1934). "Die Parametrixmethode in Anwendung auf hyperbolische Gleichungssysteme" (in de). Prace Matematyczno-Fizyczne 41 (1): 177–185. http://matwbn.icm.edu.pl/ksiazki/pmf/pmf41/pmf41117.pdf. 
•   (1937). "Neue Mechanik materieller Systeme" (in de). Acta Physica Polonica 6: 163–209. 
•   (1937). "Das zitternde Elektron und seine Dynamik" (in de). Acta Physica Polonica 6: 218–224. 
•   (1939). "Le problème de M. Hadamard relatif à la diffusion des ondes" (in fr). Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences de Paris 208: 1776–1778. 
•   (1939). "Le problème de M. Hadamard relatif à la diffusion des ondes" (in fr). Acta Mathematica 71 (1): 249–282. doi:10.1007/BF02547756. 
• With Bielecki, A.; Weyssenhoff, J. W. (1939). "Sur un théorème concernant une transformation d'intégrales quadruples en intégrales curvilignes dans l'espace de Riemann" (in fr). Bulletin International de l'Académie Polonaise des Sciences et Lettres de Cracovie, Classe des Sciences Mathématiques et Naturelles, Section A: 22–28. 
•   (1940). "The variational equation of relativistic dynamics". Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 36 (3): 331–350. doi:10.1017/S0305004100017370. Bibcode: 1940PCPS...36..331M. 
•   (1942). "Relativistic dynamics of a spinning magnetic particle". Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 38 (1): 40–60. doi:10.1017/S0305004100022210. Bibcode: 1942PCPS...38...40M. 

See also

• Józef Lubański

Further reading

• Lucia, U. (2005), "Myron Mathisson", in O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Mathisson.html .
• Bartnik, E. A.. "A short history of Theoretical Physics at Hoza 69...". Warsaw University. http://info.fuw.edu.pl/~bartnik/hist.html. 
• Sauer, T.; Trautman, A. (2008). "Myron Mathisson: What little we know of his life". arXiv:0802.2971 [physics.hist-ph].
• Eisenstaedt, J.; Kox, A. J. (1992). Studies in the History of General Relativity. Einstein Studies. 3. Springer. p. 400. ISBN 978-0-817-634-797. https://books.google.com/books?id=vDHCF_3vIhUC&pg=PA403.