CSUF Assistant Professor of Physics Geoffrey Lovelace was quoted in an Ars Technica article posted today on the story of how the effort to detect gravitational waves survived the House Republican-led “Contract with America” in the mid-1990s. Lovelace is a member of the Cal State Fullerton team that played a major role in the recent breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves that has been widely reported in the news media.
“I think it’s truly remarkable that ordinary people, through their representatives, have consistently chosen to contribute part of their taxes to science,” said Lovelace. “You’d probably have a hard time pitching this on Shark Tank.”
Lovelace is a theorist specializing in numerical relativity. His research focuses on using supercomputer simulations to model colliding black holes and the gravitational waves they emit. He earned his doctorate in physics from the Caltech and his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Oklahoma. Lovelace worked for five years as a research associate at Cornell University before joining the Physics Department faculty in 2012.