Rate My Professor Saul Teukolsky

Teukolsky's research focuses on general relativity, relativistic astrophysics, numerical relativity, black hole and neutron star physics, and computational physics. As a graduate student, he derived the Teukolsky equation for perturbations of rotating black holes. He co-led the SXS collaboration, developing numerical relativity simulations of binary black hole mergers that provided waveform templates essential for LIGO's first gravitational wave detection in 2015 and subsequent observations. Notable publications include co-authorship of the textbooks "Black Holes, White Dwarfs, and Neutron Stars: The Physics of Compact Objects" (1983, with S. L. Shapiro) and "Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing" (third edition, 2007, with W. H. Press et al.), as well as papers such as "Properties of the Binary Black Hole Merger GW150914" (Physical Review Letters, 2016, LIGO Scientific Collaboration) and "The SpECTRE Cauchy-Characteristic Evolution System for Rapid, Precise Waveform Extraction" (Physical Review D, 2023). His awards include the 2021 Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, the 2021 Einstein Prize from the American Physical Society, fellowships of the American Physical Society and American Astronomical Society, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1973), John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1981), and election to the National Academy of Sciences (2003) and American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1996). His contributions have advanced gravitational-wave astronomy and tests of general relativity.