Fritz Zwicky
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Fritz Zwicky (February 14 1898 – February 8 1974) was an American-based Swiss astronomer.
Life and work
Fritz Zwicky was born in Varna, Bulgaria, to Swiss parents. He received an advanced education in mathematics and experimental physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, located in Zürich, Switzerland and in 1925 emigrated to the United States to work with Robert Millikan at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Zwicky had a reputation of being simultaneously billiant but also difficult to work with. Nonetheless, he was responsible for positing numerous cosmological theories that have a profound impact on understanding of our universe today. He was appointed Professor of Astronomy at Caltech in 1942 and also worked as a research director/consultant for Aerojet Engineering Corporation (1943-61) and staff member of Mount Wilson Observatory and Palomar Observatory for most of his career.
While examining the Coma galaxy cluster in 1933, Zwicky was the first to use the virial theorem to deduce the existence of unseen matter, what is now called dark matter. He and colleague Walter Baade pioneered and promoted the use of the first Schmidt telescopes used in a mountain-top observatory in 1935. In 1934 he and Baade coined the term "supernova" and hypothesized that they were the transistion of normal stars into neutron stars, as well as the origin of cosmic rays. It was a prescient insight that had tremendous impact in determining the size and age of the universe in subsequent decades.
Zwicky also created the 'tired light' theory in 1929 as an alternative to Georges LeMaitre's and Edwin Hubble's interpretation of the cosmic red shift. LeMaitre and Hubble believed that the cosmic red shift is caused by a doppler effect of universal expansion. Fritz Zwicky believed that the cosmic red shift is caused by photons gradually losing energy over distance, possibly due to resisting the gravitational fields between the source and the detector. The idea is that the photons transfer energy to massive bodies through the gravitational interaction, resulting in a reduction of the photon frequency. Such frequency shifts do exist, but they are extremely small, will sometimes result in an increase in frequency, and are associated with a change in direction of the photon. Zwicky's proposal was never accepted by more than a small minority of physicists.
He also developed a generalised form of morphological analysis, which is a method for systematically structuring and investigating the total set of relationships contained in multi-dimensional, usually non-quantifiable, problem complexes (Ritchey, 2002). He wrote a book on the subject (Zwicky, 1969), and claimed that he made many of his discoveries using this method.
In 1937, he posited that galaxy clusters could be used as gravitational lenses. In his later career, he compiled a Catalogue of Galaxies and of Clusters of Galaxies (CGCG) and won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1972. The asteroid 1803 Zwicky, the Zwicky lunar crater, and the galaxy I Zwicky 18 were all named in his honour.
Zwicky was married to Anna Margaritha and had three daughters, Margrit, Franziska, and Barbarina. His grandchildren are Christian Thomas, Ariella Frances and Christian Alexander Fritz. He is interred in Switzerland in his home canton of Glarus. The Zwicky Museum at the Landesbibliothek, Glarus, houses many of his papers and scientific work. The Fritz Zwicky Foundation in Switzerland represents and encompasses the work of this great visionary.
Bibliography
- [Amazon List of books by F. Zwicky]
- *Discovery, invention, research through the morphological approach
- *Morphology of propulsive power (Monographs on morphological research. Monograph) (Monographs on morphological research. Monograph)
- *Catalogue of galaxies and of clusters of galaxies
- *Morphological astronomy
- *Catalogue of selected compact galaxies and of post-eruptive galaxies
- *Compact galaxies and compact parts of galaxies: Eruptive galaxies and post-eruptive galaxies : [lists]
- *Collapsed matter of nuclear density and nuclear goblins
- *Report on certain phases of basic research in Germany
- *Report on certain phases of war research in Germany
- *Hydrodynamics and the structure of stellar systems,
References
- Ritchey, T. (2002). [General Morphological Analysis: A General Method for Non-Quantified Modelling] From the [Swedish Morphological Society].
- Zwicky, F. (1929). On the Red Shift of Spectral Lines through Interstellar Space. PNAS 15:773-779. [Abstract] (ADS) [Full article] (PDF)
- Zwicky, F. (1969). Discovery, Invention, Research - Through the Morphological Approach, Toronto: The Macmillian Company.
External links
- [About Zwicky] From the [The Swedish Morphological Society]
- [Idea Man] By Stephan M. Maurer. At Beamline.
- [Paper] by David Weinberg, including his "Dark Matter Rap" (featured in Timothy Ferris's The Whole Shebang)
- [http://www.dynamical-systems.org/zwicky/]
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