Freundlich, Erwin Finlay

Freundlich, Erwin Finlay (froind`lĭkh), 1885–1964, German astronomer. Freundlich obtained a doctorate in mathematics at Göttingen, then joined the Royal Observatory at Berlin, where he worked under the direction of Albert Einstein. His observations of the motion of Mercury, which differs slightly from the Newtonian prediction, were published in 1913 and helped convince the scientific community of the validity of Einstein's theory of relativity. In 1921, Freundlich joined the new Einstein Institute at Potsdam, and in 1929 he observed a solar eclipse that yielded data intriguingly different from the Einstein prediction. His speculations on these data and on astronomical red shifts, published and defended during the last half of his life, are still controversial.