Biography

Carter proposed the "Anthropic Principle" in Krakow, Poland in 1973, during a special two-week series of lectures commemorating Copernicus's 500th birthday. He proclaimed that humanity does indeed hold a special place in the Universe, an assertion that is the exact opposite of Copernicus's now universally accepted theory. His statement that day is now referred to as the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) and runs like this: "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but they take on the values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so." Later, Carter also proposed the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), which states that the Universe had to bring humanity into being. The SAP states that "the Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history."

Carter, a British astrophysicist and cosmologist from Cambridge University (later living in France holding the position of Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique's Laboratoire de l'Univers et ses Théories and teacher at the Département d'Astrophysique Relativiste et de Cosmologie, Observatoire de Paris-Meudon) famous for his work on black holes, introduced the earth-shattering concept known as Anthropic Cosmology. The anthropic principle states that the constants in the cosmos all have the values that are needed to produce carbon-based life. This assertion was taken by many people with religious agendas to mean that, from the very beginning of the universe, the laws of physics were expressly designed for the emergence of human beings, and it is said that Carter later regretted having formulated the hypothesis for this reason. He proposed the Anthropic Principle in Poland in 1973, during a special two-week series of symposia commemorating Copernicus's 500th birthday, the irony being that Copernicus's now universally accepted theory is the exact opposite of the idea that humanity does indeed hold a special place in the Universe. In the mid-1960s, Carter shared an office in Silver Street at the Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, with Stephen Hawking.

In 1968, mathematician-cosmologist Brandon Carter used the Hamilton-Jacobi theory to derive first-order equations of motion for a charged particle moving in the external fields of a Kerr-Newman black hole.

Famous for formulating his statement of "the Doomsday Argument," in 1983; it is refined in the book 'The End of the World: The Science and Ethics of Human Extinction', by John Leslie (Routledge, 1996), in which the Carter-Leslie Doomsday Argument purports to offer sound mathematical reasons for supposing that the human race will become extinct in a century or two.

Carter proposed the "Anthropic Principle" in Kraków, Poland in 1973, during a special two-week series of lectures commemorating Copernicus's 500th birthday. He proclaimed that humanity does indeed hold a special place in the Universe, an assertion that is the exact opposite of Copernicus's now universally accepted theory. His statement that day is now referred to as the Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) and runs like this: "The observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but they take on the values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so." Later, Carter also proposed the Strong Anthropic Principle (SAP), which states that the Universe had to bring humanity into being. The SAP states that "the Universe must have those properties which allow life to develop within it at some stage in its history."