Research:

John Friedman has worked on a broad range of problems in gravitational physics and relativistic astrophysics, involving neutron stars, black holes, gravitational waves from compact binaries, the topology of spacetime, and topological questions in quantum gravity.

Biographical Sketch:

John Friedman received his BA from Harvard College in 1967 and his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1973, supervised by Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. From 1974 to 1976 he was a Fermi Fellow at the University of Chicago. Since 1976 he has been at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Friedman served for three years as Chair of the Department of Physics and where he currently holds the rank of University Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Friedman is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a former chair of its gravitational physics section; he served for several years as a U.S. representative to the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation.

Selected Publications

“Rotating Relativistic Stars ”, by John L. Friedman, Nikolaos Stergioulas, Cambridge, UK; Cambridge University Press, 2013.

J.L. Friedman, and R. Sorkin. “Spin 1/2 from Gravity,” Phys. Rev. Lett., 44, 1100 (1980).

J.L. Friedman, and D.M. Witt. “Homotopy is not Isotopy for Homeomorphisms of 3-Manifolds,” Topology, 25, 35-44 (1986).

J.L. Friedman, and A. Higuchi. “State vectors in higher-dimensional gravity with kinematic quantum numbers of quarks and leptons,” Nuclear Physics B, 30, 491-515 (1990).

J.L. Friedman, K. Schleich, and D.M Witt. “Topological Censorship,” Phys. Rev. Lett., 71, 1486 (1993).

J.L. Friedman, and B.F. Schutz Jr. “Lagrangian perturbation theory of nonrelativistic fluids,” Ap J, 221, 937-957 (1978).

J.L. Friedman, and B.F. Schutz Jr. “Secular instability of rotating Newtonian stars,” Ap J, 222, 281-296 (1978).

J.L. Friedman, “Generic instability of rotating relativistic stars,” Comm. Math. Phys., 62, 247-278 (1978).

J.L. Friedman, J.R. Ipser, and L. Parker “Rapidly rotating neutron star models,” Ap J, 304, 115-139 (1986).

J.L. Friedman, J.R. Ipser, and R.D. Sorkin “Turning-point method for axisymmetric stability of rotating relativistic stars,” Ap J, 325, 722-724 (1988).

J.L. Friedman, and S.M. Morsink “Axial Instability of Rotating Relativistic Stars,” Astrophysical Jornal, 502, 714-720 (1998).

T.S. Keidl, A.G. Shah, J.L. Friedman, D-H. Kim, and L.R. Price “Gravitational self-force in a radiation gauge,” Phys. Rev. D, 82, 124012 (2010).

J.S. Read, C. Markakis, M. Shibata, K. Uryū, J.D.E. Creighton, and J.L. Friedman “Measuring the neutron star equation of state with gravitational wave observations,” Phys. Rev. D, 79, 124033 (2009).

B.D. Lackey, K. Kyutoku, M. Shibata, P.R. Brady, and J.L. Friedman “Extracting equation of state parameters from black hole-neutron star mergers: Nonspinning black holes,” Phys. Rev. D, 85, 044061 (2012).