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Jacob Bekenstein

 
Jacob Bekenstein

 
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Jacob Bekenstein
 
 
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Jacob David Bekenstein (born May 1, 1947) is a physicist
Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
 who has contributed to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics
Black hole thermodynamics

In physics, black hole thermodynamics is the area of study that seeks to reconcile the laws of thermodynamics with the existence of black hole event horizons....
 and to other aspects of the connections between information
Physical information

In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics is important, for example in the concept of quantum entanglement to describe effectively direct or causality relationships between apparently distinct or spatially separated particles....
 and gravitation
Gravitation

Gravitation is a natural phenomenon that gives weight to objects. In everyday life, attraction due to gravity is the result of the presence of relatively large bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon....
. He was born in Mexico City
Mexico City

Mexico City is the capital city of Mexico. It is the most important economic, industrial, and cultural center in the country; the most populous city with over 8,836,045 inhabitants in 2008....
, Mexico
Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federalism constitutionalism republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico....
 to Israeli
Demographics of Israel

This article is about the demographics features of the population of Israel, including population density, Ethnic group, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
 Jewish settlers. He is Polak Professor
Professor

The meaning of the word professor varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the Academic department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual....
 of Theoretical Physics
Theoretical physics

Theoretical physics employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics in an attempt to explain experimental data taken of the natural world....
 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel's oldest university.The First Board of Governors included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, and Chaim Weizmann....
, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities

The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was set up in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between scholars from the sciences and humanities in Israel, to advise the government on research projects of national importance, and to promote excellence....
 and of The World Jewish Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Rothschild Prize in Physics and of the Israel National Prize.

nstein received his undergraduate education in the Polytechnic University
Polytechnic University of New York

Polytechnic Institute of New York University, also referred to as Polytechnic Institute of NYU or NYU-Poly, is the United States' second oldest private institute of technology, founded in 1854 and located in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City....
 in Brooklyn
Brooklyn

Brooklyn is one of the five Borough of New York City, located at the western end of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area....
, New York.






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Jacob David Bekenstein (born May 1, 1947) is a physicist
Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many Physics#Major fields of physics spanning all length scales: from atom particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole ....
 who has contributed to the foundation of black hole thermodynamics
Black hole thermodynamics

In physics, black hole thermodynamics is the area of study that seeks to reconcile the laws of thermodynamics with the existence of black hole event horizons....
 and to other aspects of the connections between information
Physical information

In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics is important, for example in the concept of quantum entanglement to describe effectively direct or causality relationships between apparently distinct or spatially separated particles....
 and gravitation
Gravitation

Gravitation is a natural phenomenon that gives weight to objects. In everyday life, attraction due to gravity is the result of the presence of relatively large bodies, such as the Earth and the Moon....
. He was born in Mexico City
Mexico City

Mexico City is the capital city of Mexico. It is the most important economic, industrial, and cultural center in the country; the most populous city with over 8,836,045 inhabitants in 2008....
, Mexico
Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federalism constitutionalism republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico....
 to Israeli
Demographics of Israel

This article is about the demographics features of the population of Israel, including population density, Ethnic group, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
 Jewish settlers. He is Polak Professor
Professor

The meaning of the word professor varies. In some English-speaking countries, it refers to a senior academic who holds a departmental chair, especially as head of the Academic department, or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual....
 of Theoretical Physics
Theoretical physics

Theoretical physics employs mathematical models and abstractions of physics in an attempt to explain experimental data taken of the natural world....
 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is Israel's oldest university.The First Board of Governors included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber, and Chaim Weizmann....
, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities

The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, based in Jerusalem, was set up in 1961 by the State of Israel to foster contact between scholars from the sciences and humanities in Israel, to advise the government on research projects of national importance, and to promote excellence....
 and of The World Jewish Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Rothschild Prize in Physics and of the Israel National Prize.

Education

Bekenstein received his undergraduate education in the Polytechnic University
Polytechnic University of New York

Polytechnic Institute of New York University, also referred to as Polytechnic Institute of NYU or NYU-Poly, is the United States' second oldest private institute of technology, founded in 1854 and located in the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City....
 in Brooklyn
Brooklyn

Brooklyn is one of the five Borough of New York City, located at the western end of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area....
, New York. He received his PhD from Princeton University
Princeton University

Princeton University is a private university university located in Princeton, New Jersey, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League and has the largest per-student Financial endowment in the world....
 in 1972, supervised by John Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler

John Archibald Wheeler was an eminent United States theoretical physicist. One of the later collaborators of Albert Einstein, he tried to achieve Einstein's vision of a unified field theory....
.

Major contributions to physics

In 1972, Bekenstein was the first to suggest that black holes should have a well-defined entropy
Entropy

In many branches of science, entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system. The concept of entropy is particularly notable as it is applied across physics, information theory and mathematics....
. Bekenstein also formulated the generalized second law of thermodynamics, black hole thermodynamics
Black hole thermodynamics

In physics, black hole thermodynamics is the area of study that seeks to reconcile the laws of thermodynamics with the existence of black hole event horizons....
, for systems including black holes. Both contributions were affirmed when Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking Companion of Honour, Commander of the British Empire, Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy is a British Theoretical physics....
 proposed the existence of Hawking radiation
Hawking radiation

Hawking radiation is a thermal radiation with a black body predicted to be emitted by black holes due to quantum physics effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking who provided the theoretical argument for its existence in 1974, and sometimes also after the physicist Jacob Bekenstein who predicted that black holes should have a...
 two years later.

Based on his black-hole thermodynamics work, Bekenstein also demonstrated the Bekenstein bound
Bekenstein bound

In physics, the Bekenstein bound is a conjectured limit on the entropy S or information that can be contained within a region of space containing a known energy....
: there is a maximum to the amount of information that can potentially be stored in a given volume, and that this maximum is proportional to the area that bounds this volume and not to the volume itself (related to the holographic principle
Holographic principle

The holographic principle is a property of quantum gravity theories which resolves the black hole information paradox within string theory. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind....
).

In 1982, Bekenstein was the first person to develop a rigorous framework to generalize the laws of electromagnetism
Electromagnetism

Electromagnetism is the physics of the electromagnetic field, a field which exerts a force on Elementary particles with the property of electric charge and which is reciprocally affected by the presence and motion of such particles....
 to handle inconstant physical constant
Physical constant

A physical constant is a physical quantity that is generally believed to be both universal in nature and constant in time. It can be contrasted with a mathematical constant, which is a fixed numerical value but does not directly involve any physical measurement....
s. His framework replaces the fine structure constant by a scalar field. However, this framework for changing constants did not incorporate gravity.

In 2004, Bekenstein greatly boosted Mordehai Milgrom
Mordehai Milgrom

Mordehai Milgrom is an Israeli physicist and professor in the department of Condensed Matter Physics at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot. He is most famous for his proposal of Modified Newtonian dynamics as an alternative to the dark matter and galaxy rotation curves problem, in 1981....
’s theory of Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) by developing a relativistic version. It is known as TeVeS
Tensor-vector-scalar gravity

Tensor-Vector-Scalar gravity is a proposed relativistic theory which purports to explain galactic rotation curves without invoking dark matter....
 for Tensor/Vector/Scalar and it introduces three different fields in space time to replace the one gravitational field.

See also

  • Bekenstein bound
    Bekenstein bound

    In physics, the Bekenstein bound is a conjectured limit on the entropy S or information that can be contained within a region of space containing a known energy....
  • Black hole thermodynamics
    Black hole thermodynamics

    In physics, black hole thermodynamics is the area of study that seeks to reconcile the laws of thermodynamics with the existence of black hole event horizons....