ENGELBERT SCHUCKING

SCHUCKING--Engelbert.

Engelbert Schucking, Noted Cosmologist, Dies at 88. NYU professor Engelbert Levin Schucking dedicated his life to understanding the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the universe. He died Monday, January 5, 2015, in his apartment in Greenwich Village. He is survived by his partner Olga Greengard, his children Michael, Aleke, Prosper, Heffa and Ivor, and his grandchildren Lea and Noah. Engelbert was born on May 23, 1926 in Germany to the lawyer Lothar Schucking and his wife Louise. His family had been active in academic life for hundreds of years and was persecuted by the Nazis for their political views. As a child, he watched the night sky through a small telescope, and by the age of 14 was counting sunspots for the Zurich Observatory. But astronomy was only one of his passions. He soon developed an interest in mathematics and physics, and began the scientific journey that continued throughout his life. At the University of Gottingen, his teachers included such luminaries as Werner Heisenberg. In Hamburg, he became the assistant of Pascual Jordan, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. After obtaining his PhD there in 1955, he worked with Otto Heckmann, a leading cosmologist of the day. In 1962, Schucking became professor of physics at the University of Texas at Austin and turned it into a leading world center for relativity, together with Alfred Schild. In 1963, Schucking initiated the highly successful Symposia on Relativistic Astrophysics, now known as the "Texas Conferences". This symposia series continues semi-annually and remains a venue for a fertile exchange of ideas on relativity, astrophysics and cosmology. In 2013, at the age of 87, Schucking gave his last speech here. His life's work revolved around the application of differential geometry and Lie group theory to the study of Einsteins field equations, with special emphasis on cosmological solutions. Perhaps most notable are his discoveries of a metric solution describing a finite rotating cosmos, with Istvan Oszvath, and the invention of a classification of 3-dimensional Lie algebras, with application to homogeneous cosmologies. In 1996, NYU held a symposium to celebrate Schucking's achievements, published by Springer in the book "On Einsteins Path". The essays by Roger Penrose, Andrzej Trautman, and many others describe Schuckings far-reaching influence on the community of relativists. The astrophysicist Ed Spiegel calls him "one of the great heroes of the neo- Newtonian revolution in cosmology," and Roger Penrose credits him for ideas that were fundamental for the development of twistor theory. He adds: "Engelbert's instincts are generated from his own personal deep understandings, and do not at all derive from whatever might be the prevailing fashionable view. He has not only knowledge and judgment, but a profound originality." But his interests were not purely academic. He also helped apply general relativity to correct the timing of the global position satellite. As a teacher, Schucking was unparalleled. He received an NYU award of excellence for embodying "the highest ideals of the teaching profession." His legacy includes TV appearances on "Sunrise Semester", teaching over 6,500 students and supervising some 20 PhDs -several became influential relativists. "All those who came to know him were deeply impressed by his vast erudition, exhilarated by his subtle humor, and touched by his gentleness and caring nature. His abiding passion for understanding any subject of interest in depth and detail was truly inspiring," says C. V. Vishveshwara, a pioneer in black hole physics. Schucking died just weeks before the publication of his most recent work, a book about Einsteins theory of gravitation, entitled Einsteins Apple". He believed in the words of the man whose monumental work was the core of his own studies: "Our death is not an end if we have lived on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us; our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life."