Thibault Damour

Thibault Damour
Thibault Damour (2010)
Born (1951-02-07) 7 February 1951 (age 73)
Lyon, France
NationalityFrench
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure
Université Paris 6
Known forEffective one-body formalism
AwardsPrix Paul Langevin (1984)
Albert Einstein Medal (1996)
Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2016)
CNRS Gold medal (2017)
Dirac Medal of the ICTP (2021)[1]
Balzan Prize (2021)
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy
General Relativity
InstitutionsObservatoire de Paris
Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques

Thibault Damour (French: [tibo damuʁ]; born 7 February 1951) is a French physicist.

He was a permanent professor in theoretical physics at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHÉS) from 1989 to 2022. Since then, he is professor emeritus.

An expert in general relativity, he has long taught this theory at the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm). He contributed greatly to the modelling of gravitational waves from compact binary systems, and with Alessandra Buonanno, he invented the "effective one-body" approach to representing the orbital trajectories of binary black holes.[2]

In 2021 he was awarded, with Alessandra Buonanno, the Balzan Prize for Gravitation: physical and astrophysical aspects[3] as well as the Galileo Galilei Medal and the Dirac Medal of the ICTP, both also shared with Frans Pretorius.

References

  1. ^ Dirac Medal of the ICTP 2021
  2. ^ Buonanno, A.; Damour, T. (1999-03-08). "Effective one-body approach to general relativistic two-body dynamics". Physical Review D. 59 (8): 084006. arXiv:gr-qc/9811091. Bibcode:1999PhRvD..59h4006B. doi:10.1103/physrevd.59.084006. ISSN 0556-2821. S2CID 14951569.
  3. ^ Balzan Prize 2021


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