Physicist and astronomer — Karl Schwarzschild (Frankfurt am Main 1873 – Potsdam 1916) was a German physicist and astronomer, director of the Potsdam Observatory. A child prodigy, he published works on celestial mechanics while still a teenager. His most famous contribution came in 1916, just months after Einstein published general relativity: he found the first exact solution of the field equations, that for the gravitational field around a spherical mass. From this solution emerges a critical radius, today called the Schwarzschild radius, within which not even light can escape: it is the theoretical basis of the concept of a black hole. He obtained these results under dramatic conditions, while serving in the military on the Russian front, where he contracted the illness that led to his death at just 42.
Trivia
He worked out his solution of Einstein’s equations while at the front during the First World War and sent it to Einstein by letter, who was surprised by it; he died a few months later of a rare skin disease.
Theories and contributions
- Schwarzschild solution — First exact solution of Einstein’s equations for the field around a static spherical mass, described by the corresponding metric.
- Schwarzschild radius — Radius of a black hole’s event horizon: .
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Linked atoms
2 linked atoms.