1965
Martin Schwarzschild, the son of German astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild, earned his Ph.D. at Göttingen. He left Germany in 1936, researched and taught at Oslo, Harvard, and Columbia, and, after serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1947. His work on stellar structure and 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. Much of this was done with Richard Härm. 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 many of his 22 graduate students became influential astronomers. He held major leadership positions in several scientific societies.
Presentation of Bruce medal
Henyey, L.J., PASP 77, 233-36 (1965).
Other awards
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Newcomb Cleveland Prize, 1957.
American Astronomical Society, Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, 1960.
American Astronomical Society Division on Dynamical Astronomy, Dirk Brouwer Award, 1992.
Association pour le Développement International del’Observatoire de Nice, ADION medal, 1985
Astronomische Gesellschaft, Karl Schwarzschild Medal, 1959.
International Balzan Foundation, Balzan Prize, 1994.
National Academy of Sciences, Henry Draper Medal, 1960.
National Medal of Science, 1997.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Jansky Prize, 1980.
Royal Astronomical Society, Eddington Medal, presented by W.H. McCrea, QJRAS 4, 180-82 (1963); Gold medal, 1969, presented by D.H. Sadler, QJRAS 10, 91-94 (1969).
Societé Astronomique de France, Prix Janssen, 1970.
Some offices held
American Astronomical Society, President, 1970-72.
Biographical materials
Bitterman, Jay, Lake County Astronomical Society
Mestel, L., Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society 45, 469-84 (1999).
Ostriker, Jeremiah P., Biographical memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013.
Trimble, Virginia, Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 2nd ed. (Springer, NY, 2014), pp. 1963-65.
Obituaries
Dressler, Alan, “Four Stars of the Cosmos: Martin Schwarzschild, Eugene Merle Shoemaker, Lyman Spitzer Jr., Clyde W. Tombaugh),” The New York Times Magazine Jan 4, 1998, p. 44 col. 2.
Mestel, L, Bull. Astr. Soc. India 25, 285 (1997).
Ostriker, Jeremiah, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc. 143, 485-89 (1999).
Paczynski, Bohdan, Bull. Am. Astr. Soc. 29, 1485-86 (1997).
Paczynski, Bohdan, Physics Today 50, 12, 90-91 (Dec 1997).
Pfau, Werner, Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 81, 5-7 (1998) [in German].
Trimble, Virginia, PASP 109, 1289-97 (1997).
Portraits
AIP Center for History of Physics (several)
Princeton University: Astrophysics Faculty in 1949
Named after him
Minor Planet #4463 Marschwarzschild [#837 Schwarzschilda is named for his father, Karl]
Schwarzschild-Haus, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam [with Karl Schwarzschild]