Alexander Alexandrovich Friedman
| Alexander Friedmann | |
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Alexander Friedmann
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| Born | Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann June 16, 1888 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire |
| Died | September 16, 1925 (aged 37) Leningrad, USSR |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Fields | Mathematics and Physics |
| Institutions |
Petrograd Polytechnical Institute Main Geophysical Observatory |
| Alma mater | St. Petersburg State University |
| Doctoral advisor | Vladimir Steklov |
| Doctoral students |
George Gamow Nikolai Kochin Pelageya Polubarinova-Kochina |
| Known for |
Friedmann equations Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric |
| Spouse | Natalia Malinina |
Signature
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Alexander Alexandrovich Friedmann (also spelled Friedman or Fridman; Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Фри́дман) (June 16 [O.S. 4], 1888 – September 16, 1925) was a Russian and Soviet physicist and mathematician. He is best known for his pioneering theory that the universe was expanding, governed by a set of equations he developed now known as the Friedmann equations.
Alexander Friedmann was born to the composer and ballet dancer Alexander Friedmann (who was a son of a baptized Jewish cantonist) and the pianist Ludmila Ignatievna Voyachek. Friedmann was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church as an infant, and lived much of his life in Saint Petersburg.
Friedmann obtained his degree in St. Petersburg State University in 1910, and became a lecturer in Saint Petersburg Mining Institute.
From his school days, Friedmann found an inseparable companion in Jacob Tamarkin, who at the end of his career was one of Brown University's most distinguished mathematicians.
Friedmann fought in World War I on behalf of Imperial Russia, as an army aviator, an instructor and eventually, under the revolutionary regime, as the head of an airplane factory.
Friedmann in 1922 introduced the idea of an expanding universe that contained moving matter; Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaître would later independently reach the same conclusion in 1927.
In June 1925 he was given the job of the director of Main Geophysical Observatory in Leningrad. In July 1925 he participated in a record-setting balloon flight, reaching the elevation of 7,400 m (24,300 ft).
Friedmann's 1924 papers, including "Über die Möglichkeit einer Welt mit konstanter negativer Krümmung des Raumes" ("On the possibility of a world with constant negative curvature of space") published by the German physics journal Zeitschrift für Physik (Vol. 21, pp. 326–332), demonstrated that he had command of all three Friedmann models describing positive, zero and negative curvature respectively, a decade before Robertson and Walker published their analysis.
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