Schwarzschild, Karl

Schwarzschild, Karl

(born Oct. 9, 1873, Frankfurt am Main, Ger.—died May 11, 1916, Potsdam) German astronomer. He published his first paper (on celestial orbits) at age 16. In 1901 he became professor and director of the observatory at the University of Göttingen. He gave the first exact solution of Albert Einstein's general equations of gravitation, which led to a description of how mass curves space. He also laid the foundation of the theory of black holes, using the gravitational equations to show that a body of sufficient mass would have an escape velocity greater than the speed of light and therefore would not be directly observable, since even light rays from it could not escape into space. See also Schwarzschild radius.

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Schwarzschild, Karl 

Born Oct. 9,1873, in Frankfurt am Main; died May 11, 1916, in Potsdam. German astronomer. Member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences (1912).

From 1901, Schwarzschild was a professor at the University of Göttingen and director of the university’s observatory. Beginning in 1909, he was director of the astrophysical observatory in Potsdam. In 1912 he became a professor at the University of Berlin.

Schwarzschild worked out the methodology of photographic stellar photometry and compiled a catalog that contained the photographic determinations of the brightnesses of 3,500 stars. A number of his studies were devoted to the theoretical investigation of various problems of stellar astronomy and astrophysics. Schwarzschild established the ellipsoidal distribution of stellar velocities and gave a general solution of the integral equations of stellar statistics. He created the theory of the radiative equilibrium of stellar atmospheres and studied binary and variable stars, comets, and problems of quantum mechanics and relativity theory as applied to astronomy. Schwarzschild is also known for his studies in optics.

REFERENCE

Ambartsumian, V. A. “Karl Shvartsshil’d.” In Tvortsy nauki o zvezdakh. . . . Leningrad, 1930.