Karl Schwarzschild
Karl Schwarzschild was a German astronomer whose contributions, both practical and theoretical, were of primary importance in the development of 20th century astronomy. Schwarzschild’s exceptional ability in science became evident at the age of sixteen, when his paper on the theory of celestial orbits was published. ... While at Gottingen, Schwarzschild introduced precise methods in photographic photometry. ... “Schwarzschild enunciated the principle of radiative equilibrium and was the first to recognize clearly the role of radiative processes in the transport of heat in stellar atmospheres,” (World Book 10, 548). ... Schwarzschild made fundamental contributions to theoretical physics and to relativity. ... Schwarzschild developed the general rules quantization, gave the complete theory of the Stark effect, and initiated the quantum theory of molecular spectra. Schwarzschild gave the first exact solution of Einstein’s general gravitational equations, which led to a description of geometry of space in the neighborhood of a mass point. ... Karl Schwarzschild published his first paper on the theory of orbits at the age of sixteen, then studied at Strasbourg, then at Munich where he obtained hid doctorate with a dissertation on an application of Poincare’s theory of stable configurations of rotating bodies to tidal deformation of moons and to Laplace’s origin of the solar system. ... Schwarzschild published on electrodynamics and geometrical optics during his time at Gottingen. ... “Schwarzschild’s relativity papers gave exact solutions of Einstein’s general gravitational equations, giving an explanation of the geometry of space near a point mass,” (Schwarzschild, Karl, the web).