Important Figures in Astrophysics

There have been many men and women that have famously studied the field of astrophysical science and quantum mechanics. People have been looking at the sky since the days of the ancient Greeks, the people known for their discovery of stars and planets (some planets wouldn't be discovered until centuries after the ancient Greeks). There are a lot of people who study and are inspired by astrophysicists. You might be thinking, Which astrophysicists and quantum physicists should I care about the most? Read further, and your question will most certainly be answered.

(All information and photographs were been obtained from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://www.wikipedia.com)

Catlover9771's Top 3 List of Astrophysicists

#1 - Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein after receiving a Nobel Prize in physics in  1921

source: en.wikipedia.org

Albert Einstein is known as one of the Founding Fathers of quantum theory. He was born in Ulm, Germany on March 14th, 1879 to Hermann and Pauline (Koch) Einstein. Einstein left his parents' home when he was fourteen years old. He married Mileva Malic, whom he met at Swiss Federal Polytechnic in 1895, in 1903 and their first child, Lieresl was born a year earlier. (Lieresl's fate remains unknown, but was not mentioned in any discovered letters after her birth announcement from Malic to Einstein.) Later, they had another child, named Hans Albert. In 1914, they divorced because of being separated for five years.

In 1901, Albert published his first paper, titled Folgerugen aus den Kapillaritat Erscheinungen ("Conclusions in Capillarity Phenomena") in the science journal, Annalen der Physik ("Annals of Physics"). In 1905, Einstein completed his thesis. Thus, Einstein was issued a PhD from the University of Zurich in Switzerland. That same year, he published four more papers (on the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, special relativity, and the equivalence of mass and energy), which granted his world fame.

He is known for his theory of relativity (general and special) and his groundbreaking equation, e=mc2. Unfortunately, Einstein died at the age of 76 on April 18th, 1955 of an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

#2 - Max Planck

Planck in 1933, at the age of 75.

Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck was born on April 23rd, 1858 in Kiel, Duchy of Holstein. He is also known as a Founding Father of quantum mechanics. As a matter of fact, he was the one who started it all. He was a theoretical physicist. After he invented quantum theory, he won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918 at the age of sixty.

The Planck constant, which was first used as a way to link the amount of energy that a photon carries with the measured frequency of its electromagnetic wave. It can be written as E=HF. It was simply named after him.

He grew up in a tradition household of intellectuals. His paternal great-grandfather and his grandfather were both theoretical physicists in Gottingen. His father was a law professor in Kiel and Munich. His father's name was Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck. His mother, Emma Patzig, was his father's second wife. Planck was baptized as Karl Ernst Ludwig Marx Planck. Marx has been indicated as his primary name.

He was one of the academics that took notice to Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity.

Max died on October 4th, 1947 at the age of 89.

#3 - Erwin Schrodinger

Erwin Schrodinger is known for the thought experiment, Schrodinger's cat, which states that, according to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, if a cat is under a box, it is alive and dead at the same time until one looks under the box. Once the box is removed, the cat is no longer simultaneously alive and died. (If you search for it, I wrote a post about Schrodinger's cat.)

Erwin Schrodinger's full name was Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrodinger. He was born to Rudolf Schrodinger, a botanist, and Georgine Emilia Brenda. Erwin was an only child. His mother was half-Austrian and half-English. Georgine was Lutheran and Rudolf was Catholic. Despite his religious background, Schrodinger was a known atheist in his adulthood.

Schrodinger was born on August 12th, 1887 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.