Alfred Schild
Alfred Schild (September 7, 1921, in Istanbul[1] – May 24, 1977, in Downer's Grove, Illinois) was a leading German-American physicist, well known for his contributions to the Golden age of general relativity (1960–1975).
Schild was born in Istanbul. His parents were German-speaking Viennese Jews,[2][3] but his early education was in England. Upon the outbreak of World War II Schild was interned as an enemy alien, but later allowed to travel to Canada. In 1944 he earned his B.A. at the University of Toronto, and in 1946 completed his doctorate under the direction of Leopold Infeld. Schild spent the next eleven years at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, where he helped to develop the first atomic clocks.
As tensors are the language of general relativity, Schild wrote Tensor Calculus with John L. Synge as a textbook.[4] According to a reviewer, "The ideas and concepts are given very concisely and thus a wide range of subjects is considered."[5]
In 1957 he moved to the University of Texas at Austin. In 1962 he became Ashbel Smith Professor and founded the Center for Relativity at University of Texas, Austin.[6]
In 1965, he worked with Roy Kerr to develop the Kerr-Schild spacetime model. In a 1970 seminar at Princeton University, he introduced an important construction now known as Schild's Ladder.
Professor Schild died in 1977 of a myocardial infarction.[7]
Schild's private papers are archived by the University of Texas.
In popular culture
The science fiction novel Schild's Ladder by Greg Egan drew heavily on concepts introduced or refined by Schild.
Notes
- ↑ Who was who in America with world notables. 1981, p. 505.
- ↑ Pedro G. Ferreira «The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity» (p. 114)
- ↑ Engelbert L. Schucking «The First Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics»
- ↑ Synge, J. L. & Schild, A. (1949). Tensor Calculus. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-1031-8. OCLC 6007241.
- ↑ John DeCicco (1951 ) Review: J. L. Synge & Alfred Schild Tensor Calculus, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society 57(6):500–2 via Project Euclid
- ↑ Richard A. Matzner & L. C. Shepley (1982) Spacetime and Geometry: The Alfred Smith Lectures, page ix, University of Texas Press
- ↑ Alfred Schild from Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin
References
- Oren, Amanda. "SCHILD, ALFRED". Handbook of Texas On-Line. Retrieved 7 August 2005.
- Debney, G.C.; Kerr, R. P. & Schild, A. (1969). "Solutions of the Einstein and Einstein-Maxwell Equations". J. Math. Phys. 10 (10): 1842. Bibcode:1969JMP....10.1842D. doi:10.1063/1.1664769.
- Kerr, R. P. & Schild, A. (1965). "Some algebraically degenerate solutions of Einstein's gravitational field equations". Proc. Symp. Appl. Math. 17: 199.