The singularities of gravitational collapse and cosmology. (English) Zbl 0954.83012

Hawking, S. W.; Penrose, R.

Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Ser. A 314, No. 1519, 529-548 (1970).

It is not verifiable anymore why this fundamental paper did not get its review in Zentralblatt when it was published. Now this is an important historical reference. It is the first publication of the famous Hawking-Penrose Singularity Theorem in cosmology. The theorem had big impact of subsequent research and represents one of the outstanding achievements in geometric cosmology or global Lorentzian geometry. It found a more comprehensive exposition very soon in the monograph by S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis [The large scale structure of space-time (Cambridge Univ. Press 1973; Zbl 0265.53054)] and became a standard feature in several advanced expositions in differential geometry like the book of B. O’Neill [Semi-Riemannian Geometry, Academic Press (1983; Zbl 0531.53051)]. Hence there is no need to describe the details of the theorem here.

Reviewer: Bernd Wegner (Berlin)

MSC:

83C75	Space-time singularities, cosmic censorship, etc.
83F05	Relativistic cosmology
83-03	History of relativity and gravitational theory
01A60	History of mathematics in the 20th century
53Z05	Applications of differential geometry to physics

Keywords:

space-time singularities; Hawking-Penrose singularity theorem; geometric cosmology; global Lorentzian geometry

Citations:

Zbl 0265.53054; Zbl 0531.53051