Ignazio Ciufolini

Ignazio Ciufolini (born 1951) is an Italian physicist active in the field of gravitational physics and general relativity.

Ignazio Ciufolini graduated magna cum laude in 1980 at Sapienza University of Rome and was awarded the PhD degree in Physics in 1984 at the University of Texas at Austin.

From 1982 to 1988 he worked at University of Texas at Austin as a teaching assistant, lecturer and research associate. He is now an Associate Professor of General Physics at University of Salento (Italy), tenured since 1999, and a member of Centro Fermi, Rome. He collaborated with John Archibald Wheeler, with whom in 1995 wrote the book Gravitation and Inertia. He works mainly in the field of General Relativity and Gravitational Physics. He proposed also a method to measure the effects of gravitomagnetism using the data from the laser ranged satellites LAGEOS and LAGEOS-2. Ignazio Ciufolini is the Principal Investigator for the Italian Space Agency (ASI) of the Laser Relativity Satellite (LARES) mission, a space mission aimed to improve the accuracy of the measurement of frame-dragging.

In 1995 he was awarded the Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence of the Association of American Publishers, PROSE Award, as author (with John A. Wheeler) of the best 1995 professional and scholar book in physics and astronomy (Gravitation and Inertia).

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