KARL SCHWARZSCHILD

'Karl Schwarzschild' (October 9, 1873 - May 11, 1916) was a German physicist and astronomer. He is also the father of astrophysicist Martin Schwarzschild.
He was born in Frankfurt am Main. He was something of a child prodigy and had a paper on orbits published when he was only sixteen. He studied at Strasbourg and Munich, obtaining his doctorate in 1896 for a work on Jules Henri Poincaré's theories.
From 1897, he worked as assistant at the Kuffner Sternwarte (Observatory) in Vienna, where he developed a formula to calculate the optical density of photographic material. It involved an exponent now known as the Schwarzschild-exponent, which is the $p$ in the formula:
$i\; =\; f\; (\; Icdot\; t^p\; )$
(where $i$ is optical density of exposed photographic emulsion, a function of $I$, the intensity of the source being observed, and $t$, the exposure time, with $p$ a constant). This formula was important for enabling more accurate photographic measurements of the intensities of faint astronomical sources.
From 1901 until 1909 he was a professor at the prestigious institute at Göttingen, where he had the opportunity to work with some significant figures including David Hilbert and Hermann Minkowski. Schwarzschild became the director of the observatory in Göttingen.
He moved to a post at the Astrophysical Observatory in Potsdam in 1909.
From 1912, Schwarzschild was a member of the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften'' (Prussian Academy of Sciences).
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he joined the German army despite being over 40 years old. He served on both the western and eastern fronts, rising to the rank of lieutenant in the artillery.
While serving in Russia in 1915, he wrote three main papers, two on relativity theory and one on quantum theory. His work on relativity produced the first exact solutions to the general gravitational equations.
Einstein confirmed in 1915 the first two GR-solutions: The first Schwarzschild solution for black holes and his "second" or "Inner Schwarzschild solution" (translated from the original German text: "Innere Schwarzschild Lösung"), valid within a sphere of homogeneous and isotropic distributed molecules within a shell of radius r=R. It is applicable to solids; incompressible fluids; the sun and stars viewed as a quasi-isotropic heated gas; and any homogeneous and isotropic distributed gas.
Two properties of black holes have been given his name: the Schwarzschild metric and the Schwarzschild radius. The latter is the radius of the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole.
He undertook measurements of variable stars, using photography. He also worked on improving optical systems, devising a perturbation equation to investigate geometrical aberrations.
He is said to have died either of pemphigus brought on while serving in Russia during World War I or of a "rare metabolic disorder".

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See also

★ Schwarzschild, things named after Karl Schwarzschild

External links

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★ Roberto B. Salgado The Light Cone: The Schwarzschild Black Hole

★ Obituary in the Astrophysical Journal, written by Ejnar Hertzsprung