Pantur Silaban

Pantur Silaban is one of the foremost physicists in Indonesia, especially in the field of theoretical physics. He is also one of the earliest physicists from ASEAN countries who studied Einstein's general relativity theories in depth.

Early life

Born in Sumatra to Israel Silaban and Regina Lumbantoruan in Dairi village in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Silaban finished his bachelor's degree in physics from Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia in 1964.

Career

In 1967, he went to United States to study General Relativity theory at Central Studies of Gravitation at Syracuse University under direction of Peter Bergmann and Joshua N. Goldberg whom were among the authoritative experts in general relativity after the inventor, Albert Einstein. Here, Pantur went furthermore studied one of the hottest topics in physics at the time which tried to unify quantum field and general relativity to find quantum gravity theory. It is one of Einstein's dream which had tried but failed to formalize the fourth interaction in the universe into one single theory called Grand Unified Theory. Pantur finished his dissertation with title "Null Tetrad, Formulation of the Equation of Motion in General Relativity" in 1971.