Martin Schwarzschild (May 31, 1912 – April 10, 1997) was a German-born American astrophysicist.
He was the son of German physicist Karl Schwarzschild and the nephew of the Swiss astrophysicist
Robert Emden.
== Biography == Schwarzschild was born in Potsdam into a distinguished
German Jewish academic family.
In line with a request in his father's will, his family moved to Göttingen in 1916.
Schwarzschild studied at the University of Göttingen and took his doctoral examination
in December 1936.
He left Germany in 1936 for Norway and then the United States.
Schwarzschild served in the US army intelligence.
He was awarded the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star for his wartime service.
After returning to the US, he married fellow astronomer Barbara
Cherry.
In 1947, Martin Schwarzschild joined his lifelong friend, Lyman Spitzer at Princeton University.
Spitzer died 10 days before Schwarzschild.
Schwarzschild's work in the fields of stellar structure and stellar evolution led to improved
understanding of pulsating stars, differential solar rotation, post-main sequence evolutionary
tracks on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (including how stars become red giants), hydrogen
shell sources, the helium flash, and the ages of star clusters.
With Fred Hoyle, he computed some of the first stellar models to correctly ascend the red
giant branch by steadily burning hydrogen in a shell around the core.
He and Härm were the first to compute stellar models going through thermal pulses on the
asymptotic giant branch and later showed that these models develop convective zones between
the helium- and hydrogen-burning shells, which can bring nuclear ashes to the visible surface.
Schwarzschild’s 1958 book Structure and Evolution of the Stars taught a generation
of astrophysicists how to apply electronic computers to the computation of stellar models.
In the 1950s and ’60s he headed the Stratoscope projects, which took instrumented balloons
to unprecedented heights.
The first Stratoscope produced high resolution images of solar granules and sunspots, confirming
the existence of convection in the solar atmosphere, and the second obtained infrared spectra of
planets, red giant stars, and the nuclei of galaxies.
In his later years he made significant contributions toward understanding the dynamics of elliptical
galaxies.
Schwarzschild was renowned as a teacher and held major leadership positions in several
scientific societies.
In the 1980s, Schwarzschild applied his numerical skills to building models for triaxial galaxies.
Dr. Schwarzschild was the Eugene Higgins Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at Princeton University,
where he spent most of his professional life.
== Honors ==
=== Awards === Karl Schwarzschild Medal (1959)
Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1960) Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy
of Sciences (1960) Eddington Medal (1963)
Bruce Medal (1965) Rittenhouse Medal (1966)
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1969)
Brouwer Award (1992) Balzan Prize (1994, with Fred Hoyle)
National Medal of Science (1997)
=== Named after him === Asteroid 4463 Marschwarzschild
== See also == Stratoscope
Perhapsatron Betelgeuse
== References ==
== External links == Published papers of Martin Schwarzschild on
SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System D. Merritt, Martin Schwarzschild's Contributions
to Galaxy Dynamics Oral history interview with Martin Schwarzschild,
4 sessions, 1977.
Niels Bohr Library, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD.
Oral history interview with Martin Schwarzschild, 1986.
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.