General Relativity

From the Contents: Part I The General Theory of Relativity.- Introduction.- Physics in External Gravitational Fields.- Einstein's Field Equations .- Part II Applications of General Relativity.- The Schwarzschild Solution and Classical Tests of General Relativity.- Weak Gravitational Fields.- The Post-Newtonian Approximation.- White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars.- Black Holes.- The Positive Mass Theorem.- Essentials of Friedmann-Lema^itre Models.- Part III Differential Geometry.- Differentiable Manifolds.- Tangent Vectors, Vector and Tensor Fields.- The Lie Derivative.- Differential Forms.- Affine Connections.- Some Details and Supplements.

Norbert Straumann (born 6 August 1936 in Niedererlinsbach) is a Swiss physicist.  He attended public schools and studied physics and mathematics at the ETH in Zurich, where his instructors included Heinz Hopf, Res Jost, Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Scherrer, Eduard Stiefel, Walter Heitler, Rolf Nevanlinna and Bartel Leendert van der Waerden. 

In his diploma thesis in 1959, Professor Straumann dealt with the characterization of generalized free fields in the axiomatic field theory, which he wrote under the direction of Res Jost. In 1961 he completed his doctorate under Walter Heitler with a thesis on hyperon and meson mass differences in a non-local field theory. In subsequent years, he was a research associate of Walter Heitler. 

From 1964 to 1965 he was a Fellow at CERN in Geneva, serving as an assistant professor at the University of Zurich. From 1967 to 1968 he taught as an associate professor at Duke University in North Carolina. At that time his focus was on the mass differences for bosons and the current algebra, a forerunner of the modern theory of strong interactions. 

In 1969 he began forming a theory group for the former Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research (now the Paul Scherrer Institute). In the seventies he changed his focus, growing more interested in the theory of gravitation. In this context, he placed great emphasis on the historical aspects of gravity. 

In 1969, Straumann became a professor at the University of Zurich, and the years and decades that followed saw him increasingly involved in major associations. From 1980-1987 he was a member of the Scientific Council at the Swiss National Science Foundation; from 1985-1986 he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Bern. In 1988 he was a visiting professor in Amsterdam. From 1997-2000 he worked on an advisory board of the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam.

In 2001 he retired, and has

Aus den Rezensionen zur 2. Auflage:

 " ... einer hübschen Sammlung wichtiger Formeln. Viele lehrreiche Übungen mit Hinweisen und Lösungen machen das Werk zu einem Lehrbuch im besten Sinne ... Es vermittelt ein außerordentlich grundliches Verständnis der Allgemeinen Relativitästheorie ... für Physiker, Astrophysiker als auch Mathematiker gleichermaßen gewinnbringend." (Gerhard Schäfer, in: Physik Journal, April/2013, Vol. 12)