UC's Roy Kerr awarded Einstein Medal 19 December 2012 University
of Canterbury Emeritus Professor Roy Kerr has become the first
New Zealander to be awarded the Einstein Medal by the Albert
Einstein Society in Switzerland. Professor Kerr has earned the
award for his 1963 discovery of a solution to Einstein's
gravitational field equations. The Kerr Solution, as it has come
to be known, provides an exact description of the space outside
a rotating black hole. With over 100 million trillion black
holes in the observable universe, his achievement has been of
crucial importance for science. The Kerr Solution has come to be
regarded as the most important exact solution to any equation in
physics and has been pivotal in understanding the most violent
and energetic phenomena in the Universe. Professor Kerr's
solution has already been recognised by the Royal Society, which
awarded him its Hughes Medal in 1984, and by the Royal Society
of New Zealand which awarded him its Hector Medal in 1982 and
its Rutherford Medal in