In 2008, the International Society on General relativity and Gravitation instituted a Thesis Prize in memory of Professor Jürgen Ehlers (1929-2008), a distinguished relativist and a past President of the Society. Professor Ehlers made seminal contributions to foundations of general relativity, many of its mathematical aspects and cosmology. He was the founding director of the Albert Einstein Institute of the Max Planck Society of Germany and won the Max Planck Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the German Physical Society.
This prize, sponsored by Springer, is awarded during the tri-annual international conferences of the Society for the best Ph.D. thesis in the areas of mathematical and numerical general relativity. The latest prize was jointly awarded at GR23 in Beijing to Vishal Baibhav’s Ph.D. thesis “Black hole beasts and where to find them” and Paul Ramond’s Ph.D. thesis “The First Law of Mechanics in General Relativity & Isochrone Orbits in Newtonian Gravity”.
Vishal’s award motivation reads:
For the innovative use of semi-analytic and numerical methods to study mass gaps and spin gaps in the dynamical evolution of black holes and the ground-breaking work on the use of the gravitational wave signals of binary mergers to determine information about the progenitors of the black holes.
Congratulations, Vishal!