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Claudia de Rham (born 29 March 1978) is a British theoretical physicist of Swiss origin working at the interface of gravity, cosmology, and particle physics. She is based at Imperial College London. She was one of the UK finalists in the Physical Sciences and Engineering category of the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists in 2018 for revitalizing the theory of massive gravity and won the award in 2020.

Early life and education

De Rham was born in Lausanne. She completed her undergraduate studies in France, receiving a Diplôme d'Ingénieur in physics at the École Polytechnique in Paris in 2000. She received a master's degree in physics from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 2001. In 2002, de Rham moved to the UK, achieving a PhD in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge on "braneworld cosmology beyond the low-energy limit". She has trained as a pilot and made it through several stages of the European Space Agency's astronaut selection process.

Research

After earning her PhD, de Rham went to Montreal to join the physics department at McGill University. She moved to McMaster University in Hamilton and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, in 2006, where she worked in a joint postdoctoral position in cosmology. In 2010, she joined the University of Geneva as an assistant professor. She moved to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2011 and became an associate professor there in 2016. She joined Imperial College London in 2016. That year, she was awarded a £100,000 Wolfson Merit Award from the Royal Society.

Her research is in the area of theoretical cosmology, and she explores gravitational models that could explain the accelerated expansion of the universe. De Rham is recognised as a researcher at the forefront of the development of theories of massive gravity, where the particle carrier of the gravitational force, the graviton, may be massive. In 2010, she constructed a nonlinear theory of a massive graviton, which is theoretically consistent and ghost-free. That formulation of massive gravity is now known as "de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) theory", owing to its discovery by de Rham, Gregory Gabadadze, and Andrew J. Tolley. Her research helps tackle the problem of the cosmological constant and could describe the accelerated expansion of the universe as a purely gravitational effect, where massive gravitons are responsible for dark energy.

In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk titled "Nature of the Graviton". She gives regular public lectures about theoretical cosmology.

De Rham was interviewed by Morgan Freeman in season 8 of Through the Wormhole.

Publications

In November 2023, de Rham co-authored The Encyclopedia of Cosmology, Set 2: Frontiers in Cosmology, Volume 1: Modified Gravity, with Andrew J Tolley, also of Imperial College London.

Awards and leadership roles

• 2010–2014: PI on Swiss National Foundation Professorship Grant, for the project "Challenging the cosmological paradigm"
• 2012–2013: PI on ACES Advance Opportunity Grant, for the project "Recent Developments in Massive Gravity"
• 2016–2021: Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award
• 2017: EPFL Alumni Award
• 2017–2021: PI on Simons Foundation Award, "Origins of the Universe" program with Rachel Rosen
• 2017–2022: PI on ERC consolidator grant, for the project "Massive Gravity and Cosmology"
• 2018: St John's College, Cambridge Adams Prize
• 2018: Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists: finalist, UK Physical Sciences and Engineering
• 2020: Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists: winner, UK Physical Sciences and Engineering
• 2023: Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

See also

• Bimetric gravity

References

1. ^ "Alumni Award Recipients". www.epflalumni.ch. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
2. ^ "Claudia de Rham | Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists". blavatnikawards.org. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
3. Claudia, De Rham (2005). Braneworld cosmology beyond the low-energy limit.
4. ^ Devlin, Hannah (25 January 2020). "Has physicist's gravity theory solved 'impossible' dark energy riddle?". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
5. "McGill Physics: CHEP seminars". www.physics.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
6. "CHEP Seminars 2007–2008". www.physics.mcgill.ca. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
7. "Claudia de Rham | Perimeter Institute". www.perimeterinstitute.ca. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
8. "Claudia de Rham". www.perimeterinstitute.ca. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
9. "Claudia de Rham | Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics – University of Geneva". cosmology.unige.ch. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
10. "Claudia de Rham". www.phys.cwru.edu. Archived from the original on 16 April 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
11. "TED | Institute for the Science of Origins". origins.case.edu. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
12. "Expanding horizons: throwing new light on dark energy". Imperial College London. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
13. ^ "Claudia de Rham". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
14. ^ "Claudia de Rham | TEDxCLE". www.tedxcle.com. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
15. ^ de Rham, Claudia; Gabadadze, Gregory; Tolley, Andrew J. (2011). "Resummation of Massive Gravity". Physical Review Letters. 106 (23): 231101. arXiv:1011.1232. Bibcode:2011PhRvL.106w1101D. doi:10.1103/physrevlett.106.231101. PMID 21770493. S2CID 3564069.
16. Rham, Claudia de (1 December 2014). "Massive Gravity". Living Reviews in Relativity. 17 (1): 7. arXiv:1401.4173. Bibcode:2014LRR....17....7D. doi:10.12942/lrr-2014-7. ISSN 2367-3613. PMC 5256007. PMID 28179850.
17. "Claudia De Rham – Festival Histoire et Cité – archive 2017". Festival Histoire et Cité – archive 2017 (in French). Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
18. "UK Cosmo at Portsmouth – April 5th 2017". www.icg.port.ac.uk. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
19. "Tube: "Graviton Mass Bounds" by Claudia de Rham (Imperial College London) « CP³-Origins". CP³-Origins. Archived from the original on 13 September 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
20. "IFT Christmas Workshop – csic.es". www.csic.es (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 18 January 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
21. "Professor Claudia de Rham". Imperial College London. 1 April 2024. Retrieved 8 October 2024.
22. Rham, Claudia de; Tolley, Andrew J. (22 November 2023). Encyclopedia of Cosmology, the – Set 2: Frontiers in Cosmology (in 3 Volumes). Hackensack: World Scientific Publishing Company. ISBN 978-981-12-8969-9.
23. ^ "Home – Claudia de Rham". www.imperial.ac.uk. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
24. "New Initiative Ponders Origins of the Universe | Simons Foundation". Simons Foundation. 21 July 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
25. Scheuber, Andrew. "Multi-million EU funding boost for Imperial researchers". Imperial College London. Archived from the original on 25 April 2017. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
26. "Awards, etc. – Cambridge University Reporter 6505". www.admin.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 25 May 2018.
27. "Theoretical physicist gets awarded in the 2018 Blavatnik Awards". Science Examiner. 16 January 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
28. Dunning, Hayley. "Imperial physicist wins first-of-its-kind science prize". Archived from the original on 16 January 2018. Retrieved 17 January 2018.
29. "Three innovative scientists receive US$100,000 (£75,000) each from prestigious Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists". Blavatnik Awards Young Scientists. New York Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 18 January 2020.
30. "New members". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2023. Retrieved 21 April 2023.

External links

• "Nature of the Graviton" on YouTube

• Living people
• Swiss cosmologists
• 21st-century Swiss physicists
• Swiss women physicists
• British theoretical physicists
• 1978 births
• Scientists from Lausanne
• Alumni of the University of Cambridge
• École Polytechnique alumni
• École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne alumni
• Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences