Jayme Tiomno: Relativity, gravity, cosmology, and the Marcel Grossmann Meetings

Abstract

Jayme Tiomno belonged to the ‘founder’s generation’ of physicists in Brazil. He began working in relativity theory early in his career, at a time when it was not at all ‘fashionable’, through the influence of his early mentor, Mario Schenberg in São Paulo. When he went to graduate school in Princeton, in February 1948, his advisor there, John Wheeler, gave him a project in General Relativity, even though this was more than 4 years before Wheeler’s ‘turn’ from nuclear and particle physics to field theory and gravitation.

Tiomno and Wheeler however soon discovered their mutual interest in meson decays, and Tiomno’s Masters and PhD theses were on topics from particle physics, which remained his major field of interest for the following 20 years, during which he collaborated with Abdus Salam, among others. Only when he returned to Princeton in 1971, a refugee from the oppressive dictatorship in Brazil, did he again begin working in gravitation and field theory, having missed the ‘golden age’ initiated in part by Wheeler’s group.

At the IAS, Tiomno experienced a renaissance of his interest in field theory, working with Remo Ruffini and others. He continued this work in the 1980’s after he was able to return to the CBPF in Rio de Janeiro (which he had helped to found). His participation in the Marcel Grossmann Meetings was limited but significant.