Howard P. Robertson
Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (January 27, 1903 – August 26, 1961) was an American mathematician and physicist known for contributions related to physical cosmology and the uncertainty principle.
His name is most often associated with the Poynting–Robertson effect, the process by which solar radiation causes a dust mote orbiting a star to lose angular momentum, which he also described in terms of general relativity.
He served as technical consultant to the Secretary of War, the OSRD Liaison Officer in London, and the Chief of the Scientific Intelligence Advisory Section at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
[2] They had two children: George Duncan, who became a surgeon, and Marietta, who later married California Institute of Technology (Caltech) historian Peter W. Fay.
[2] Robertson completed his PhD dissertation in mathematics and physics there in 1925 under the supervision of Harry Bateman, writing "On Dynamical Space-Times Which Contain a Conformal Euclidean 3-Space".
[3][4] Upon receipt of his doctorate, Robertson received a National Research Council Fellowship to study at the University of Göttingen in Germany, where he met David Hilbert, Richard Courant, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Martin Schwarzschild, John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner.
[19] He independently developed the concept of an expanding universe,[20] which would imply distant galaxies as seen from Earth would be redshifted – a phenomenon previously confirmed by Vesto Slipher[21][22] .
[24] Yet Robertson's name is most often associated with the Poynting–Robertson effect,[19] the process by which solar radiation causes a dust mote orbiting a star to lose angular momentum.
[26] Aside from his work in physics, Robertson played a central role in American scientific intelligence during and after World War II.
This was absorbed with other groups into Division 2 of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), with Robertson engaged in the study of terminal ballistics.
[29] In 1944 Robertson also became a technical consultant to the Secretary of War, and the chief of the Scientific Intelligence Advisory Section at Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.
[31][27] He was a Central Intelligence Agency classified employee and director of the Weapons System Evaluation Group in the Office of the Secretary of Defense[32] from 1950 to 1952, and scientific advisor in 1954 and 1955 to the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Alfred M. Gruenther.
