Meet the Editors | Interview with Prof. Dr. James A. Isenberg - Section EiC of “Gravitation”

Prof. Dr. James A. Isenberg, Associate Editor of the journal Universe. He is one of the pioneers in the study of the constraint equations in classical general relativity. The author of over 140 papers and 5 books, he has held visiting positions at Oxford, Paris, Potsdam, Stockholm, Vienna, and Canberra in addition to numerous locations in his native United States.

His many important contributions include completion of the solution theory of constraint equations on closed manifolds with constant mean curvature and, together with his collaborators, the first nontrivial results on the non-constant mean curvature case. He is currently focusing on the study of solutions to the Einstein constraint equations, on strong cosmic censorship and the nature of singularities in general relativistic models of the universe, and on the formation of singularities in Ricci flow and mean curvature flow.

1. What attracted you to scientific editing for Universe?

I have done scientific editing for two journals in past years: Physical Review D and Annales Henri Poincaré. I very much enjoyed doing that. My terms with these two journals ran out, so when Universe asked if I would be interested, I quickly agreed. To me, it is very important that top-quality papers in physics and mathematics be carefully reviewed and consequently be certified as correct and worth being studied by the community. While arXiv serves an important role, I still think it is crucial that excellent journals continue to play their role in determining which papers are correct and worthy of attention.

2. Can you tell us a little bit about your current research?

My current research projects include the following: a) studies of the effectiveness of the conformal method for constructing and parameterizing the space of solutions of the Einstein constraint equations with matter sources; b) development of a method for localized gluing of shear-free asymptotically hyperbolic solutions of the Einstein equations; c) studies of the nature of solutions of the Einstein scalar field equations in the vicinity of cosmological singularities; d) analysis of singularities in Ricci flow and mean curvature flow.

3. Which research topics do you think will be of particular interest to the research community in the coming years?

I think there will be continuing strong interest in determining if strong cosmic censorship and weak cosmic censorship hold for solutions of general relativity. There will also be continuing interest in determining if the Kerr black hole solution is stable given an appropriate opportunity.

4. Universe is an Open Access journal. How do you think Open Access impacts authors?

This is a difficult issue. Open Access has been strongly advocated in medical and biological research journals. Consequently, other areas of science and math have also moved in that direction. However, many researchers working in universities have been reticent about Open Access because of their limited funds for publishing. For me, it will be interesting to see how Open Access journals evolve in time.