Fritz Zwicky
| Fritz Zwicky | |
|---|---|
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| Born | February 14, 1898 Varna, Principality of Bulgaria |
| Died | February 8, 1974 (aged 75) Pasadena, California, US |
| Residence | USA |
| Citizenship | Swiss |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | California Institute of Technology |
| Alma mater | Swiss Federal Polytechnic |
| Doctoral advisor | Peter Debye and Paul Scherrer |
| Known for | Dark matter, supernovae, galaxies, neutron stars |
| Notable awards | President's Medal of Freedom (1949) Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1972) |
Fritz Zwicky (February 14, 1898 – February 8, 1974) was a Swiss astronomer. He worked most of his life at the California Institute of Technology in the United States of America, where he made many important contributions in theoretical and observational astronomy. In 1933, Zwicky was the first to use the virial theorem to infer the existence of unseen dark matter, describing it as "dunkle Materie".
Fritz Zwicky was born in Varna, in the Principality of Bulgaria, to a Swiss father. His father, Fridolin (b. 1868), was a prominent industrialist in the Bulgarian city and also served as ambassador of Norway in Varna (1908–1933). The Zwicky House in Varna was designed and built by Fridolin Zwicky. Fritz's mother, Franziska Vrček (b. 1871), was an ethnic Czech of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Fritz was the oldest of the Zwicky family's three children: he had a younger brother named Rudolf and a sister, Leonie. Fritz's mother died in Varna in 1927, and his father Fridolin remained in Bulgaria until 1945, when he returned to Switzerland. His sister Leonie married a Bulgarian from Varna and spent her entire life in the city.
In 1904, at the age of six, Fritz was sent to his grandparents in the family's ancestral canton in Glarus, Switzerland, to study commerce. His interests shifted to math and physics and he received an advanced education in mathematics and experimental physics at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic (today known as ETH Zurich), located in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1925, he emigrated to the United States to work with Robert Millikan at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) with an office down the hall from Robert Oppenheimer after receiving the "international fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation."
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