Fritz Zwicky

Fritz Zwicky was a américano-Switzerland astrophysicist born the February 14th 1898 with Varna (Bulgaria) and deceased the February 8th 1974 with Pasadena (the United States), known for its sometimes brilliant ideas, sometimes eccentric, but also like the largest discoverer of Supernova E. It will pass its childhood in Suisse to Mollis and will make its studies at the Federal Polytechnic school of Zurich where it will obtain there a doctorate of physics in 1922, then it will off integrate in 1925 the California Institute Technology where it will teach there the theoretical physics and astrophysics of 1929 with 1968.

Shining astrophysicist, it will be admired by certain for his ideas, but will be hated by others for his terrible character, in particular by his students whom it terrorized. He will leave few indifferent astrophysicists.

Zwicky will be rewarded in 1972 for the Gold medal for Royal Astronomical Society.

The Astéroïde (1803) Zwicky was named in its honor.

Work

After its studies, Zwicky will be interested quickly in astronomy, in particular in the Nova E.

1936 Zwicky work with the Mount-Palomar with a photographic telescope with broad field of a type very special, it discovers several Supernovae which will be analyzed by Walter Baade Wilson mount.

It is him which introduces with the German astronomer Walter Baade the term of supernovas and suggested that those could create neutron stars (whose he predicts the existence) and emit cosmic rays. To support its assumption, it started to drive out the supernovas, and will discover a total of 120< of it! --- 1956C was in fact the asteroid (9574) Taku, and 1954J is now considered to have been a start pre-SN of a star similar to Carinae eta ---> (and one moreover, SN 1963J, in.liaison.with Paul Wild) over one 52 years period (SN 1921B until SN 1973K), a record which always holds in 2006 (the second place returns to Jean Mueller, with 98 discovered and 9 Co-discoveries).

Black matter

In 1929 with meadows the discovery of Paul Dirac, Zwicky studies the Antimatière with the Mont Palomar in stars and the galaxies.

In 1933 it is the first to suggest the presence of a invisible matter between the Galaxie S, following its observations with the Observatoire of the Mount Wilson of seven of them in the cluster of Coma, but it will hardly convince its fellow-members of the importance of his discovery, which will be forgotten during nearly forty years.

Its twisted spirit will completely give to birth to ideas mild nutters. In 1948, it proposes to return the others Planet S livable by modifying their orbit around the Sun in order to adjust the temperatures on their surface. In the Years 1960, it imagines to deteriorate the reactions of nuclear Fusion of the Sun by bombarding it of particles since the ground. The goal would be to change the Trajectoire Sun and, consequently occasion, Solar system entire. In this way, It would be then possible to travel towards other stars like star close Alpha to the Centaur over one 2500 years duration writes it.

He also worked at Aerojet shortly after the Second world war on the German rockets V2 and will thus contribute in 1957 to the sending of the first projectile (of human manufacture) since the ground in the space, which will have definitively escaped with the terrestrial Gravité.

He is the author of a catalog of galaxies and galaxy cluster ( Catalog off Galaxies and off Clusters off Galaxies , CGCG) which he will publish towards the end of his life (1961 - 68), containing 9134 Galaxy cluster.

Fritz Zwicky is the inventor of “Morphology”, a method of thought which consisted in seeking the solution of a problem by testing all the possible combinations in a matrix called “morphological box”. This method allows thus by associating the forms of the morphological box to lead to completely insane combinations but which would nourish the creativity of the spirit and could finally bring an interesting idea. For example, by associating “Sun” and “space voyage”, Zwicky thought of moving the solar system bombarding the Sun of particles (see higher).

Anecdotes

Character considered for his difficult character, Zwicky did not miss audacity. “Bastard spherical”, thus it called his colleagues of the Wilson Mount. Why spherical? Because they were, according to him, of bastard with all the visual angles. Expression which it seemed to rather usually use.

At the time of the conferences, it was not obstructed to stop his colleagues in order to specify only the questions to them which they raised in their speech, had already been solved by itself.

Zwicky was ready to test all kinds of solutions to a problem, even more the baroques. During an observation with the Wilson Mount, disturbed by turbulences of the air, he asked his assistant to draw in the zone from air with the gun in the hope which the ball dissipates these turbulences (the experiment failed).

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