Dennis W. Sciama
Dennis William Siahou Sciama, FRS (/ʃiˈæmə/; 18 November 1926 – 18 December 1999)[7][8] was an English physicist who, through his own work and that of his students, played a major role in developing British physics after the Second World War.[9][10] He was the PhD supervisor to many famous physicists and astrophysicists, including John D. Barrow, David Deutsch, George F. R. Ellis, Stephen Hawking, Adrian Melott and Martin Rees, among others; he is considered one of the fathers of modern cosmology.[11][12][13][14]
Dennis Sciama
18 December 1999 (aged 73)
2
- Faraday Medal (1991)[1]
- Guthrie Medal and Prize (1991)
Gravitation
On the origin of inertia (1952)
Education and early life[edit]
Sciama was born in Manchester, England, the son of Nelly Ades and Abraham Sciama.[15] He was of Syrian-Jewish ancestry — his father born in Manchester and his mother born in Egypt, but both traced their roots back to Aleppo, Syria.[16]
Sciama earned his PhD in 1953 at the University of Cambridge supervised by Paul Dirac,[2] with a dissertation on Mach's principle and inertia. His work later influenced the formulation of scalar-tensor theories of gravity.