Basilis C. Xanthopoulos

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Basilis C. Xanthopoulos (1951 - November 27, 1990) was a Greek theoretical physicist, well known in the field of general relativity for his contributions to the study of colliding plane waves.

Xanthopoulos was born in Drama. After majoring in mathematics at the University of Thessaloniki he moved to the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1978. During this time, he collaborated with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar on colliding plane waves. In particular, they discovered an exact solution which models two gravitational plane waves which collide, interact nonlinearly, and create in the interaction zone a curved region of spacetime which is locally isometric to the Kerr vacuum. This is now called the Chandrasekhar/Xanthopoulos colliding plane wave.

Tragically, Xanthopoulos and a colleague were murdered by a disgruntled student in 1990.

[edit] References

• Basilis C. Xanthopoulos (1951-1990). Retrieved on August 8, 2005.; this obituary contains a bibliography of Xanthopoulos's scientific papers.

• Chandrasekhar, S. and Xanthopoulos, B. C. (October 1987). "On colliding waves that develop time-like singularities: a new class of solutions of the Einstein–Maxwell equations". Proc. Roy. Soc. A 410: 311-336. ; this paper gives the Chandrasekhar/Xanthopoulos colliding plane wave solution.