Oscar Wilde, 1890

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire

As of August 2008 I am resigning my full-time position at Loyola and entering Emeritus status. I will continue my research with the support of my colleagues and my endowed Professorship funds. For the remainder of 2008 I will also maintain my office and address at Loyola.

J. C. Carter Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics
Recipient of Humboldt Senior Research award, 1998
Ph. D. Physics, Princeton, 1961. Thesis: Mach's Principle and a Varying Gravitational Constant
General Research Interests: general relativity and related mathematics, spacetime models, differential topology
Selected Publications: "Gravity and the Tenacious Scalar Field," gr-qc 9705069, Schucking Festschrift. "Cosmological Anomalies and Exotic Smoothness," (with Asselmeyer) gr-qc/0110043, Gen. Rel. Grav. 34, 1767 (2002). “The roots of scalar-tensor theory:an approximate history”, gr-qc/0506063. contribution to Cuba workshop, 2004, Exotic Smoothness and Physics: Differential Topology and Spacetime Models, with T. Asselmeyer-Maluga, WSP(2007)
Other 2007 work:
University of Houston Colloquium lecture, April 2007: “Rise and Fall of Scalars…” See uh/Scalars-UH-07.pdf
Albert Einstein Institute, Golm, Germany, Colloquium lecture, may 2007, “Exotic Smoothness and Spacetime Models”, See aei/ex-talk-aei-2007.pdf (amended 4/16/08)
Annalen der Physik, Mashhoon Fest issue, to appear, “New Level of Relativity”, See mashhoon-fest/relativitylevels-mashhoon-2007.pdf
Review of early work: Dave Kaiser wrote a nice summary of the introduction of scalar fields in , including Brans-Dicke, in the June 2007 issue of Scientific American. A copy is available at
kaiser-SA-article-part.pdf

Some of my personal history and papers related to Scalar-Tensor theories: http://loyno.edu/~brans/ST-history, and the page at the Albert Einstein Institute: Carl H. Brans, " Varying Newton’s constant: A personal history of scalar-tensor theories " in: Einstein Online Vol. 4 (2010), 1002, http://www.einstein-online.info/spotlights/scalar-tensor

Current Research Interests: .For several years now I have been studying recent work in differential topology on exotic differentiable structures on topologically trivial spaces looking to possible applications to spacetime models used in physical theories. Torsten Asselmeyer(Berlin) and I have finished a research monographs, Exotic Smoothness and Physics published by World Scientific 2007. See our page: http://www.loyno.edu/~cbta
I am also reviewing the various roles of scalar fields in gravitional field theory as dilatons, Jordan-Brans-Dicke fields, etc. in contemporary physics.

Special notes after Katrina, 8/29/05

Last update: 9/7/06

For former students, 9/7/06

First, thank you for all of your expressions of concern and support. As of now, we really can’t answer everyone individually, but we will get to it eventually. In the meantime, I know you have received the form letter sent out last week. More on that later also. We (Physics) are preparing a web page with general background information and will let you know how to access it. To provide an alternative to the administration’s party line, “Pathways…,” some people have prepared an off campus site,

http://loyno.info

as a vehicle for general university faculty input, independent of the administrative site. I suggest you check it out.

Anyway, more on this later…

Again, thanks for all of your personal e-mails.

General Post-K recovery notes

Moved to

http://loyno.edu/~brans/old-katrina.html

The contents of this communication are the sole responsibility of Carl Brans and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policies of Loyola University New Orleans.

Last Modified:12/18/08