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Gunnar Nordström (12 March 1881 – 24 December 1923) was a Finnish theoretical physicist best remembered for his theory of gravitation, which was an early competitor of general relativity. Nordström is often designated by modern writers as The Einstein of Finland due to his novel work in similar fields with similar methods to Einstein.[1][2]
Picture taken in 1900 of three high school graduates; Gunnar Nordström is on the left.
Nordström graduated high-school from Brobergska skolan in central Helsinki 1899. At first he went on to study mechanical engineering, graduating in 1903 from the Polytechnic institute in Helsinki, later renamed Helsinki University of Technology and today a part of the Aalto University. During his studies he developed an interest for more theoretical subjects, proceeding after graduation to further study for a master's degree in natural science, mathematics and economy at the University of Helsinki (1903–1907).[3]
Nordström then moved to Göttingen, Germany, where he had been recommended to go to study physical chemistry. However, he soon lost interest in the intended field and moved to study electrodynamics, a field the University of Göttingen was renowned for at the time.[1] He returned to Finland to complete his doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki in 1910, and become a docent at the university. Subsequently, he became fascinated with the very novel and soon burgeoning field of gravitation and wanted to move to the Netherlands where scientists with contributions to that fields such as Hendrik Lorentz, Paul Ehrenfest and Willem de Sitter were active. Nordström was able to move to Leiden in 1916 to work under Ehrenfest, in the midst of the First World War, due to his Russian passport. Nordström spent considerable time in Leiden where he met a Dutch physics student, Cornelia van Leeuwen, with whom he went on to have several children.[3] After the war he declined a professorship at the University of Berlin, a post awarded instead to Max Born, in order to return to Finland in 1918 and hold at first the professorship of physics and later the professorship of mechanics at the Helsinki University of Technology.
One of the keys to Nordström's success as a scientist was his ability to learn to apply differential geometry to physics, a new approach that also would eventually lead Albert Einstein to the theory of general relativity. Few other scientists of the time in the world were able to make effective use of this new analytical tool, with the notable exception of Ernst Lindelöf.[4]
During his time in Leiden, Nordström solved Einstein's field equations outside a spherically symmetric charged body.[5] The solution was also found by Hans Reissner,[6]Hermann Weyl[7] and George Barker Jeffery,[8] and it is nowadays known as the Reissner–Nordström metric. Nordström maintained frequent contact with many of the other great physicists of the era, including Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. For example, it was Bohr's contributions that helped Nordström to circumvent the Russian censorship of German post to Finland,[2]which at the time was a grand duchy in personal union with the Russian Empire.
The theory for which Nordström was arguably most famous in his own lifetime, his theory of gravitation, was for a long time considered as a competitor to Einstein's theory of general relativity, which was published in 1915, after Nordström's theory. In 1914 Nordström introduced an additional space dimension to his theory, which provided coupling to electromagnetism. This was the first of the extra dimensional theories, which later came to be known as Kaluza–Klein theory. Kaluza and Klein, whose names are commonly used today for the theory, did not publish their work until the 1920s. Some speculations as to why Nordström's contribution fell into obscurity are that his theory was partly published in Swedish and that Einstein in a later publication referenced to Kaluza alone.[1] Today extra dimensions and theories thereof are widely researched, debated and even looked for experimentally.
Nordström's theory of gravitation was subsequently experimentally found to be inferior to Einstein's, as it did not predict the bending of light which was observed during the solar eclipse in 1919.[2] However, Nordström and Einstein were in friendly competition or by some measure even cooperating scientists, not rivals. This can be seen from Nordström's public admiration of Einstein's work, as demonstrated by the two occasions on which Nordström nominated Einstein for the Nobel Prize in physics for his theory of relativity.[1] Einstein never received the Nobel prize for the theory, as the first experimental evidence presented in 1919 could at the time still be disputed and there was not yet a consensus or even general understanding in the scientific community of the complex mathematical models that Einstein, Nordström and others had developed. Nordström's scalar theory is today mainly used as a pedagogical tool when learning general relativity.[9]
Today, there is limited public knowledge of Nordström's contributions to science, even in Finland.[2] However, after his death a number of Finnish physicists and mathematicians devoted their time to the theory of relativity and differential geometry, presumably due to the legacy he left. On the other hand, the most notable opponent of general relativity in the Finnish scientific world was Hjalmar Mellin, the previous rector of the Helsinki University of Technology where Nordström held professorship.[4]
Gunnar Nordström's letter of recommendation to the Nobel Committee for Albert Einstein
Personal lifeedit
At the outbreak of WWI, Nordström moved to the Netherlands, where he met and married his wife Cornelia van Leeuwen. They moved back to Finland in 1918.
Deathedit
Nordström died in December 1923, at the age of 42, from pernicious anemia. The illness was perhaps caused by exposure to radioactive substances. Nordström was known for experimenting with radioactive substances[1] and for enjoying the Finnish sauna tradition using water from a spring rich in radium.[4] Among his publications there is one from 1913 regarding the measurement of the radioactive emancipation power of different springs and ground waters in Finland.[1][2]
Selected publicationsedit
During Nordström's career he published 34 articles and research papers in languages including German, Dutch, Finnish, and his mother-tongue Swedish. Nordström is probably the first person to write about the theory of relativity in the languages of Finland.
Die Energiegleichung für das elektromagnetische Feld bewegter Körper, 1908, Doctoral dissertation
Rum och tid enligt Einstein och Minkowski, 1909, published in a series of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters: Öfversigt af Finska Vetenskaps-Societetens Förhandlingar
Relativitätsprinzip und Gravitation, 1912, in Physikalische Zeitschrift
Träge und Schwere Masse in der Relativitätsmechanik, 1913, in Annalen der Physik
Über die Möglichkeit, das Elektromagnetische Feld und das Gravitationsfeld zu vereiningen, 1914, in Physikalische Zeitschrift
Zur Elektrizitäts- und Gravitationstheorie, 1914, in the series Öfversigt
Über eine mögliche Grundlage einer Theorie der Materie, 1915, in the series Öfversigt
Een en ander over de energie van het zwaarte krachtsveld volgens de theorie van Einstein, 1918
^ ab"NORDSTRÖM Gunnar" (PDF). List of faculty at the university of Helsinki. Helsinki University Central. (I have chosen to use this source when conflicting information was available in less official sources, mainly regarding graduation years)
^ abcTotuuden nimessä: Kaksitoista merkittävää Suomen Tiedeseuran jäsentä (In the name of truth: twelve important members of the Finnish society of science), pages 173–176
^Nordström, G. (1918). "On the Energy of the Gravitational Field in Einstein's Theory". Verhandl. Koninkl. Ned. Akad. Wetenschap., Afdel. Natuurk., Amsterdam. 26: 1201–1208. Bibcode:1918KNAB...20.1238N.
^Reissner, H. (1916). "Über die Eigengravitation des elektrischen Feldes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie". Annalen der Physik (in German). 50 (9): 106–120. Bibcode:1916AnP...355..106R. doi:10.1002/andp.19163550905.
^Weyl, H. (1917). "Zur Gravitationstheorie". Annalen der Physik (in German). 54 (18): 117–145. Bibcode:1917AnP...359..117W. doi:10.1002/andp.19173591804.
^Jeffery, G. B. (1921). "The field of an electron on Einstein's theory of gravitation". Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A. 99 (697): 123–134. Bibcode:1921RSPSA..99..123J. doi:10.1098/rspa.1921.0028.
^John D. Norton. "and Nordström – Some Lesser Known Thought Experiments in Gravitation" (PDF). Retrieved 18 November 2017.
Referencesedit
Finn Ravndal (2004). "Scalar Gravitation and Extra Dimensions". Gunnar Nordström Symposium on Theoretical Physics: 151. arXiv:gr-qc/0405030. Bibcode:2004gntp.conf..151R. Offers some historical information regarding Nordström's contributions to physics.
External linksedit
Isaksson, Eva. "Gunnar Nordström". (short biography). Retrieved 5 August 2005.
November 05, 2023
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You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Finnish November 2017 Click show for important translation instructions Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate rather than simply copy pasting machine translated text into the English Wikipedia Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low quality If possible verify the text with references provided in the foreign language article You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Finnish Wikipedia article at fi Gunnar Nordstrom see its history for attribution You should also add the template Translated fi Gunnar Nordstrom to the talk page For more guidance see Wikipedia Translation Gunnar Nordstrom 12 March 1881 24 December 1923 was a Finnish theoretical physicist best remembered for his theory of gravitation which was an early competitor of general relativity Nordstrom is often designated by modern writers as The Einstein of Finland due to his novel work in similar fields with similar methods to Einstein 1 2 Gunnar NordstromNordstrom at the age of 35Born12 March 1881Helsinki FinlandDied24 December 1923 1923 12 24 aged 42 Helsinki FinlandNationalityFinnishCitizenshipRussian FinnishAlma materHelsinki University of Technology Engineer University of Helsinki Master of Science and PhD Known forNordstrom s theory of gravitationKaluza Klein theoryReissner Nordstrom metricScientific careerFieldsPhysics MechanicsInstitutionsHelsinki University of TechnologyUniversity of HelsinkiUniversity of GottingenUniversity of LeidenAcademic advisorsPaul Ehrenfest Walther Nernst briefly Contents 1 Education and career 2 Contributions to theory 3 Personal life 4 Death 5 Selected publications 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External linksEducation and career edit nbsp Picture taken in 1900 of three high school graduates Gunnar Nordstrom is on the left Nordstrom graduated high school from Brobergska skolan in central Helsinki 1899 At first he went on to study mechanical engineering graduating in 1903 from the Polytechnic institute in Helsinki later renamed Helsinki University of Technology and today a part of the Aalto University During his studies he developed an interest for more theoretical subjects proceeding after graduation to further study for a master s degree in natural science mathematics and economy at the University of Helsinki 1903 1907 3 Nordstrom then moved to Gottingen Germany where he had been recommended to go to study physical chemistry However he soon lost interest in the intended field and moved to study electrodynamics a field the University of Gottingen was renowned for at the time 1 He returned to Finland to complete his doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki in 1910 and become a docent at the university Subsequently he became fascinated with the very novel and soon burgeoning field of gravitation and wanted to move to the Netherlands where scientists with contributions to that fields such as Hendrik Lorentz Paul Ehrenfest and Willem de Sitter were active Nordstrom was able to move to Leiden in 1916 to work under Ehrenfest in the midst of the First World War due to his Russian passport Nordstrom spent considerable time in Leiden where he met a Dutch physics student Cornelia van Leeuwen with whom he went on to have several children 3 After the war he declined a professorship at the University of Berlin a post awarded instead to Max Born in order to return to Finland in 1918 and hold at first the professorship of physics and later the professorship of mechanics at the Helsinki University of Technology One of the keys to Nordstrom s success as a scientist was his ability to learn to apply differential geometry to physics a new approach that also would eventually lead Albert Einstein to the theory of general relativity Few other scientists of the time in the world were able to make effective use of this new analytical tool with the notable exception of Ernst Lindelof 4 Contributions to theory editFurther information Nordstrom s theory of gravitation During his time in Leiden Nordstrom solved Einstein s field equations outside a spherically symmetric charged body 5 The solution was also found by Hans Reissner 6 Hermann Weyl 7 and George Barker Jeffery 8 and it is nowadays known as the Reissner Nordstrom metric Nordstrom maintained frequent contact with many of the other great physicists of the era including Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein For example it was Bohr s contributions that helped Nordstrom to circumvent the Russian censorship of German post to Finland 2 which at the time was a grand duchy in personal union with the Russian Empire The theory for which Nordstrom was arguably most famous in his own lifetime his theory of gravitation was for a long time considered as a competitor to Einstein s theory of general relativity which was published in 1915 after Nordstrom s theory In 1914 Nordstrom introduced an additional space dimension to his theory which provided coupling to electromagnetism This was the first of the extra dimensional theories which later came to be known as Kaluza Klein theory Kaluza and Klein whose names are commonly used today for the theory did not publish their work until the 1920s Some speculations as to why Nordstrom s contribution fell into obscurity are that his theory was partly published in Swedish and that Einstein in a later publication referenced to Kaluza alone 1 Today extra dimensions and theories thereof are widely researched debated and even looked for experimentally Nordstrom s theory of gravitation was subsequently experimentally found to be inferior to Einstein s as it did not predict the bending of light which was observed during the solar eclipse in 1919 2 However Nordstrom and Einstein were in friendly competition or by some measure even cooperating scientists not rivals This can be seen from Nordstrom s public admiration of Einstein s work as demonstrated by the two occasions on which Nordstrom nominated Einstein for the Nobel Prize in physics for his theory of relativity 1 Einstein never received the Nobel prize for the theory as the first experimental evidence presented in 1919 could at the time still be disputed and there was not yet a consensus or even general understanding in the scientific community of the complex mathematical models that Einstein Nordstrom and others had developed Nordstrom s scalar theory is today mainly used as a pedagogical tool when learning general relativity 9 Today there is limited public knowledge of Nordstrom s contributions to science even in Finland 2 However after his death a number of Finnish physicists and mathematicians devoted their time to the theory of relativity and differential geometry presumably due to the legacy he left On the other hand the most notable opponent of general relativity in the Finnish scientific world was Hjalmar Mellin the previous rector of the Helsinki University of Technology where Nordstrom held professorship 4 nbsp Gunnar Nordstrom s letter of recommendation to the Nobel Committee for Albert EinsteinPersonal life editAt the outbreak of WWI Nordstrom moved to the Netherlands where he met and married his wife Cornelia van Leeuwen They moved back to Finland in 1918 Death editNordstrom died in December 1923 at the age of 42 from pernicious anemia The illness was perhaps caused by exposure to radioactive substances Nordstrom was known for experimenting with radioactive substances 1 and for enjoying the Finnish sauna tradition using water from a spring rich in radium 4 Among his publications there is one from 1913 regarding the measurement of the radioactive emancipation power of different springs and ground waters in Finland 1 2 Selected publications editDuring Nordstrom s career he published 34 articles and research papers in languages including German Dutch Finnish and his mother tongue Swedish Nordstrom is probably the first person to write about the theory of relativity in the languages of Finland Die Energiegleichung fur das elektromagnetische Feld bewegter Korper 1908 Doctoral dissertation Rum och tid enligt Einstein och Minkowski 1909 published in a series of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters Ofversigt af Finska Vetenskaps Societetens Forhandlingar Relativitatsprinzip und Gravitation 1912 in Physikalische Zeitschrift Trage und Schwere Masse in der Relativitatsmechanik 1913 in Annalen der Physik Uber die Moglichkeit das Elektromagnetische Feld und das Gravitationsfeld zu vereiningen 1914 in Physikalische Zeitschrift Zur Elektrizitats und Gravitationstheorie 1914 in the series Ofversigt Uber eine mogliche Grundlage einer Theorie der Materie 1915 in the series Ofversigt Een en ander over de energie van het zwaarte krachtsveld volgens de theorie van Einstein 1918See also editNordstrom s theory of gravitationNotes edit a b c d e f Eva Isaksson Gunnar Nordstrom suomalainen Einstein painovoiman teoriaa 1910 luvulla Retrieved 18 November 2017 a b c d e Raimo Keskinen 1981 Gunnar Nordstrom 1881B1923 Arkhimedes 2 1981 s 71B84 In Finnish excerpt http www tieteessatapahtuu fi 797 KESKINEN pdf Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine a b NORDSTROM Gunnar PDF List of faculty at the university of Helsinki Helsinki University Central I have chosen to use this source when conflicting information was available in less official sources mainly regarding graduation years a b c Totuuden nimessa Kaksitoista merkittavaa Suomen Tiedeseuran jasenta In the name of truth twelve important members of the Finnish society of science pages 173 176 Nordstrom G 1918 On the Energy of the Gravitational Field in Einstein s Theory Verhandl Koninkl Ned Akad Wetenschap Afdel Natuurk Amsterdam 26 1201 1208 Bibcode 1918KNAB 20 1238N Reissner H 1916 Uber die Eigengravitation des elektrischen Feldes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie Annalen der Physik in German 50 9 106 120 Bibcode 1916AnP 355 106R doi 10 1002 andp 19163550905 Weyl H 1917 Zur Gravitationstheorie Annalen der Physik in German 54 18 117 145 Bibcode 1917AnP 359 117W doi 10 1002 andp 19173591804 Jeffery G B 1921 The field of an electron on Einstein s theory of gravitation Proc R Soc Lond A 99 697 123 134 Bibcode 1921RSPSA 99 123J doi 10 1098 rspa 1921 0028 John D Norton and Nordstrom Some Lesser Known Thought Experiments in Gravitation PDF Retrieved 18 November 2017 References editFinn Ravndal 2004 Scalar Gravitation and Extra Dimensions Gunnar Nordstrom Symposium on Theoretical Physics 151 arXiv gr qc 0405030 Bibcode 2004gntp conf 151R Offers some historical information regarding Nordstrom s contributions to physics External links editIsaksson Eva Gunnar Nordstrom short biography Retrieved 5 August 2005 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Gunnar Nordstrom amp oldid 1179838837, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
