Gravitation and general relativity at King’s College London

This essay concerns the study of gravitation and general relativity at King’s College London (KCL). It covers developments since the nineteenth century but its main focus is on the quarter of a century beginning in 1955. At King’s research in the twenty-five years from 1955 was dominated initially by the study of gravitational waves and then by the investigation of the classical and quantum aspects of black holes. While general relativity has been studied extensively by both physicists and mathematicians, most of the work at King’s described here was undertaken in the mathematics department.