Martin Schwarzschild

2026-01-21 09:31:10

Martin Schwarzschild (Potsdam, Germany, May 31, 1912 – April 10, 1997, Langhorne, USA) was a German-American astronomer who worked on the structure and evolution of stars, including pulsating stars and the differential rotation of the Sun, the helium flash, and the age of star clusters. The Schwarzschild criterion, which determines the resistance of stellar gas to convection, is named in his honor. He traced evolutionary paths after the main sequence on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, showing how stars become red giants. The computer methods he used to create stellar models were adopted by subsequent astrophysicists. He initiated the development of the Stratoscope (1957), using balloons to deliver scientific and photographic instruments to unforeseen altitudes in the stratosphere. Using this stable platform, he obtained high-resolution observations of solar photosphere turbulence, free from atmospheric influences from the ground. He is the son of the German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences (1956) and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London (1996).