BornPotsdam, Germany, 31 May 1912
DiedLanghorne, Pennsylvania, USA, 10 April 1997
Martin Schwarzschild put twentieth-century understanding of stellar structure and evolution on a firm, quantitative footing by calculating the solutions to the differential equations that describe stellar physics for a range of star masses and compositions. He did so using realistic descriptions for nuclear reactions and energy transport, and evolving those solutions forward in time to reveal the effects of gradual composition changes due to the nuclear reactions. Schwarzschild also made significant contributions to the definition of stellar populations and to observations and theory of solar and stellar convection. Late in his career, Schwarzschild attempted to put the dynamical structure and evolution of elliptical galaxies on a similarly firm numerical footing.
Schwarzschild was the second child and elder son of Karl Schwarzschild and Else Rosenbach, the gentile daughter of a local surgeon. Martin was...
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Mestel, Leon (1997). “Martin Schwarzschild.” Bulletin of Astronomical Society of India 25(1997): 285–287.
— (1999). “Martin Schwarzschild.” Biographical Memoirs of the Fellows of the Royal Society 45: 469–484.
Schwarzschild, Martin (1958). The Structure and Evolution of the Stars. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. (Reprint, New York: Dover, 1965.)
Trimble, Virginia (1998). “Martin Schwarzschild (1912–1997).” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 109: 1289–1297.
Weart, Spencer (1977). “Transcript of interview with Martin Schwarzschild.” College Park, Maryland: Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics.
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Trimble, V. (2014). Schwarzschild, Martin. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1248
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