Jacob Bekenstein
| Jacob Bekenstein | |
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Jacob Bekenstein in 2009
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| Born |
May 1, 1947 Mexico City, Mexico |
| Died | August 16, 2015 (aged 68) Helsinki, Finland |
| Citizenship | Mexican Israeli American |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions |
Hebrew University of Jerusalem Ben-Gurion University of the Negev |
| Alma mater |
Princeton University Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn |
| Doctoral advisor | John Wheeler |
| Known for | Black hole thermodynamics |
| Notable awards |
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Jacob David Bekenstein (Hebrew: יעקב בקנשטיין; May 1, 1947 – August 16, 2015) was a Mexico-born Israeli-American theoretical physicist who made fundamental contributions to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics and to other aspects of the connections between information and gravitation.
Bekenstein was born in Mexico City in 1947, to parents Joseph and Esther (née Vladaslavotsky), Polish Jews who had migrated to Mexico. He moved to the United States during his early life, gaining U.S. citizenship in 1968. He was also a citizen of Israel.
As a student, Bekenstein attended the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, now known as the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, obtaining both an undergraduate degree and a Master of Science degree in 1969. He went on to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University, working under the direction of John Archibald Wheeler, in 1972.
By 1972, Bekenstein was already making a name for himself in the field of theoretical physics. He published three groundbreaking and influential papers regarding the black hole stellar phenomenon, which was not well understood at the time, postulating the no-hair theorem and coming up with a theory on black hole thermodynamics that year. In the years to come, Bekenstein continued his exploration of black holes, publishing papers on their entropy and quantum mass, among other subjects.
Bekenstein was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin from 1972 to 1974. He then moved to Israel to lecture and teach at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba, becoming a full professor by 1978 and head of the astrophysics department by 1983. He left Ben-Gurion University to become a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1990, becoming head of its theoretical physics department three years later. He was elected to the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1997. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2009 and 2010.
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