Andre K T Assis

Andre K. T. Assis
Andre K. T. Assis
Born	August 11, 1962; Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Residence	Campinas, SP, Brazil
Nationality	Brazilian
Alma mater	State University of Campinas (UNICAMP)
Known for	Gravity, Electromagnetism, Electrodynamics, IAAD, Mach's Principle, Tired Light, Weber's Electrodynamics, Ampere's Force between Current Elements, Relational Mechanics
	Scientific career
Fields	Professor of Physics

André Koch Torres Assis (born August 11, 1962) is a Brazilian physicist and historian of science, and a Professor of Physics at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. He is best known for his work reviving and extending the electrodynamics of Wilhelm Eduard Weber, for his theory of Relational Mechanics — a quantitative implementation of Mach's Principle intended to replace Newtonian mechanics and Einstein's theories of relativity — and for a large body of work on the history and foundations of electricity, magnetism and mechanics. Over more than three decades he has authored or co-authored more than twenty books (in Portuguese, English, German, Italian, French and Russian) and several hundred papers, and has led a multi-volume project translating the complete electrodynamic works of Wilhelm Weber into English.

His research spans several interconnected areas: gravitation (Relational Mechanics, Mach's principle and the origin of inertia, the absorption of gravity); electromagnetism (Weber's electrodynamics, Ampère's force between current elements, the electric field outside resistive wires carrying steady currents, and the propagation of electromagnetic signals); cosmology (Hubble's law of redshifts, the cosmic microwave background radiation, Tired Light, and an infinite universe in space and time); and the history and philosophy of science. He is also known for advocating hands-on physics experiments performed with simple, easily accessible materials.

Biography

André Koch Torres Assis was born on August 11, 1962, in Juiz de Fora, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He carried out all of his university education at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), earning a Bachelor's Degree in Physics in 1983 and a Ph.D. in Physics in 1987. His doctoral thesis, "Dispersion relations in a bounded, magnetized and warm plasma," was supervised by Dr. P. H. Sakanaka.

He has been a member of the faculty of the Institute of Physics at UNICAMP since May 1989, where he is a professor in the Department of Cosmic Rays and Chronology, working on the foundations of electromagnetism, gravitation and cosmology.

Academic career and international appointments

Assis has held numerous postdoctoral and visiting research positions abroad, several of them as a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany:

Culham Laboratory (United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority), England — postdoctoral position, February 1988 to January 1989 (CNPq fellowship).
Center for Electromagnetics Research, Northeastern University, Boston, USA — Visiting Scholar, October 1991 to September 1992 (FAPESP fellowship).
University of Hamburg, Institute for the History of Natural Sciences, Germany — Humboldt Research Fellow, August 2001 to November 2002 (project: "Weber's Law Applied to Electromagnetism and Gravitation").
University of Hamburg, Germany — Humboldt Research Fellow, February to May 2009 (project: "Weber's Planetary Model of the Atom").
Dresden University of Technology, Germany — Humboldt Research Fellow, April to June 2014 (project: "Exploring the Effective Inertial Mass of Particles").
Augsburg University, Germany — Humboldt Research Fellow, September to December 2023 (project: "Wilhelm Weber's Main Works on Electrodynamics Translated into English").

He has delivered invited lectures in India, Spain, Portugal, England, the USA, France, Argentina, Colombia, Italy, Greece, Chile, Poland, the Czech Republic, Canada, Germany and Russia, and has supervised numerous doctoral, master's and undergraduate students, many working on historical and experimental studies in physics.

Research

Relational Mechanics

Assis's most influential contribution is Relational Mechanics, developed principally in his book of the same name (1999) and expanded in Relational Mechanics and Implementation of Mach's Principle with Weber's Gravitational Force (2014). Relational Mechanics is a formulation of dynamics in which all motion is described relative to other bodies rather than to absolute space or an inertial frame. Building on the ideas of Ernst Mach and on Weber's velocity- and acceleration-dependent force law applied to gravitation, the theory implements Mach's Principle quantitatively: the inertia of any body arises from its gravitational interaction with the distant matter of the universe. In this framework the classic problems of Newton's bucket and the flattening of the Earth are explained by the relative rotation between local matter and the distant stars and galaxies, without recourse to absolute space or to Einstein's theories of relativity.

Weber's electrodynamics

For many years Assis has worked to make the electrical writings of Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804–1891) available and to develop their physical consequences. Weber's force law, which depends on the distance, relative radial velocity and relative radial acceleration between charges, was the subject of his first English-language book, Weber's Electrodynamics (Kluwer, 1994). He has applied Weber's law to a wide range of problems, including Ampère's force between current elements, the surface charges and electric fields of resistive conductors carrying steady currents, unipolar induction, railguns and a Weberian planetary model of the atom.

Cosmology

In cosmology Assis has argued for models of an infinite and boundless universe, static in the large, as an alternative to Big-Bang cosmology. His work in this area includes analyses of Hubble's law of redshifts interpreted through Tired Light mechanisms, and studies of the history of the ~2.7 K temperature of intergalactic space, noting predictions of this temperature that predated the 1965 discovery of the cosmic microwave background by Penzias and Wilson.

History of science

A substantial part of Assis's output concerns the history and experimental foundations of physics. He has written extensively on Archimedes and the law of the lever, on the experimental and historical foundations of electricity, and on the works of figures such as Gray, Ampère, Coulomb, Gauss and Weber, producing many annotated translations of primary sources.

The Wilhelm Weber translation project

Since the 2010s Assis has led a major scholarly effort to translate into English the collected electrodynamic works of Wilhelm Eduard Weber, published as Wilhelm Weber's Main Works on Electrodynamics Translated into English (Apeiron, from 2021). The series comprises:

Volume I — Gauss and Weber's Absolute System of Units
Volume II — Weber's Fundamental Force and the Unification of the Laws of Coulomb, Ampère and Faraday
Volume III — Measurement of Weber's Constant c, Diamagnetism, the Telegraph Equation and the Propagation of Electric Waves at Light Velocity
Volume IV — Conservation of Energy, Weber's Planetary Model of the Atom and the Unification of Electromagnetism and Gravitation
Volume V — additional and posthumous works (most recent volume in the series)

The project makes accessible for the first time in English many of Weber's foundational papers, together with related works by Gauss and other contemporaries.

Honors and awards

Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship (Germany) — awarded multiple times (2001–2002, 2009, 2014 and 2023).
Jabuti Prize (2012), one of Brazil's most prestigious literary awards, for Eletrodinâmica de Ampère (co-authored with J. P. M. C. Chaib, Editora UNICAMP, 2011).