In Pursuit of Gravitational Waves: Solving the Two-Body Problem in General Relativity.
Graphic designed and illustrated by Ana Carvalho.
News notice: The Inter-Union Commission for the History and Philosophy of Physics is sponsoring a symposium at the 2026 joint meeting of the European Society for the History of Science and the History of Science Society in Edinburgh titled “Shifting perspectives: Diversity, geographies, and possibilities in the physical sciences.” The organizers are Joanna Behrman, Barbara Hof, and Gisela Mateos, and the deadline for the call for papers is Nov. 1, 2025.
Next week, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, also called the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), will host a three-day workshop in Potsdam, Germany, titled “In Pursuit of Gravitational Waves: Solving the Two-Body Problem in General Relativity.” Further details can be found at the workshop website.
From the organizers
Just over 50 years ago, the discovery of the Hulse–Taylor binary pulsar proved the existence of gravitational waves. Since then, significant progress has been made culminating in the first detection of a gravitational wave emitted by a binary black hole merger in 2015 by the LIGO and Virgo Collaboration. This progress has emerged from a complex interplay of analytical, numerical, and experimental advances. The workshop will bring together leading physicists, historians, and philosophers to examine the historical, conceptual, and methodological developments that have shaped the evolution of one of the most profound challenges of general relativity: the relativistic two-body problem.
“We aim to investigate how analytical and numerical relativity methods have developed and interacted over time, and how they contributed to the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015,” says Alessandra Buonanno, director of the Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity department at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in the Potsdam Science Park. “The workshop will be an opportunity to reflect on the methods, conceptual challenges, and broader contexts that have shaped this remarkable scientific journey.”
Jean-Philippe Martinez, a Balzan Fellow in the history and philosophy of physics at the AEI and one of the workshop organizers, adds: “We hope to shed light on how different research traditions, institutional settings, and collaborative dynamics have guided the development of the field and continue to influence its directions today.”
The workshop is part of the Balzan Prize project. The project examines the historical and philosophical aspects of solving the two-body problem in general relativity. It focuses on the development of analytical and numerical approaches, as well as the interplay—and contrasts—between these methods. The project is funded by the 2021 Balzan Prize, which Buonanno received in the field of “Gravitation: Physical and Astrophysical Aspects.”
Participants
Kip Thorne, “Insights from the history of LIGO”
Thibault Damour, TBA
Zvi Bern, “Scattering amplitudes, effective field theory, and the post-Minkowskian approximation to gravitational waves”
Dennis Lehmkuhl, “The Early History of the Two-Body Problem: From Einstein and Grommer to the Design of LIGO”
Alexander Blum, Leor Barack, Luc Blanchet, Gerhard Schäfer, and Clifford Will, Panel discussion: “Why did progress in analytical relativity differ in Europe compared to the US, and more generally among countries?”
Frans Pretorius, “Reflections on aspects of the two-body problem circa 2005”
Manuela Campanelli, “The ongoing pursuit: From the numerical relativity breakthrough to the next decade of multimessenger astronomy”
David Kaiser, “Cold War roots of numerical relativity in the US”
Roberto Lalli, “The two-body problem and international community-building in general relativity: A network approach”
Daniel Kennefick, Miguel Alcubierre, Bernd Brügmann, Edward Seidel, and Larry Smarr, Panel discussion: “Why did progress in numerical relativity differ in Europe compared to the US, and more generally among countries?”
Abhay Ashtekar, “Gravitational waves: Perspectives on conceptual foundations”
Alessandra Buonanno, “Bridging the gap: The journey to accuracy in the relativistic two-body problem”
David Shoemaker, “The evolution of collaborations and detectors for gravitational waves in the US and Europe”
Bangalore S. Sathyaprakash, TBA
Adele La Rana, Patrick Brady, Sascha Husa, Lawrence Kidder, and Adam Pound, Panel discussion: “Appreciation, competition, and synergism between analytical and numerical relativity approaches”
Jon Phillips
American Institute of Physics
jphillips@aip.org
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