What about Black Holes? Not so much, no. Einstein himself was pleasantly surprised to learn that the field equations, developed by Grossmann, admitted exact solutions, because of their prima facie complexity, and because he himself had only produced an approximate solution. Einstein's approximate solution was given in his famous 1915 article on the advance of the perihelion of Mercury. There, Einstein used rectangular coordinates to approximate the gravitational field around a spherically symmetric, non-rotating, non-charged mass. Karl Schwarzschild, in contrast, chose a more elegant "polar-like" coordinate system and was able to produce an exact solution which he first set down in a letter to Einstein of 22 December 1915, written while Schwarzschild was serving in the war stationed on the Russian front. Schwarzschild concluded the letter by writing: "As you see, the war treated me kindly enough, in spite of the heavy gunfire, to allow me to get away from it all and take this walk in the land of your ideas." In 1916, Einstein wrote to Schwarzschild on this result:
>I have read your paper with the utmost interest. I had not expected that one could formulate the exact solution of the problem in such a simple way. I liked very much your mathematical treatment of the subject. Next Thursday I shall present the work to the Academy with a few words of explanation.—Albert Einstein
Schwarzschild's struggle with pemphigus eventually led to his death on 11 May 1916. He was only 42 years of age and at the height of his achievements when he died. Schwarzschild's work encompassed a wide range of scientific topics: he not only studied observational astronomy, but also furthered the development of astronomical instrumentation, and he was the first to give an exact solution to Einstein's (ahem, Grossmann's) field equations, which is now known as the “Schwarzschild solution."
In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light c with respect to any inertial frame is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source. But he didn't just pull this rabbit out of his hat. There is a long history of science of at least the notion of the finite speed of light, and Einstein is standing on the shoulders of giants when he publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, and heavily relied on the work of three mathematicians to develop General Relativity, and a forth for his work on Black Holes. But neither Relativity nor the constancy of the speed of light were Einstein's ideas, and not remotely so. History just gave him all the credit.
He became a rock star, world renowned, and for some reason Niels Bohr gave him a lot of attention (Bohr was a the real hero scientist, sort of a manly man scientist for all seasons), but all of Einstein's decades of thought towards a GUT produced no results. After 1915, other than his plagiarism of Schwarzschild's work (following his plagiarism of David Hilbert's work), Albert Einstein did not again contribute anything to the annals of Physics or Cosmology. He became somewhat of a unfaithful husband and womanizer of his own young female students at Princeton. No judgements here. Who wouldn't have done similarly given the same opportunity? Coeds, right? They were randy for him. He had no ability to resist it.
>I have read your paper with the utmost interest. I had not expected that one could formulate the exact solution of the problem in such a simple way. I liked very much your mathematical treatment of the subject. Next Thursday I shall present the work to the Academy with a few words of explanation.—Albert Einstein
Schwarzschild's struggle with pemphigus eventually led to his death on 11 May 1916. He was only 42 years of age and at the height of his achievements when he died. Schwarzschild's work encompassed a wide range of scientific topics: he not only studied observational astronomy, but also furthered the development of astronomical instrumentation, and he was the first to give an exact solution to Einstein's (ahem, Grossmann's) field equations, which is now known as the “Schwarzschild solution."
In 1905, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light c with respect to any inertial frame is a constant and is independent of the motion of the light source. But he didn't just pull this rabbit out of his hat. There is a long history of science of at least the notion of the finite speed of light, and Einstein is standing on the shoulders of giants when he publishes his Special Theory of Relativity, and heavily relied on the work of three mathematicians to develop General Relativity, and a forth for his work on Black Holes. But neither Relativity nor the constancy of the speed of light were Einstein's ideas, and not remotely so. History just gave him all the credit.
He became a rock star, world renowned, and for some reason Niels Bohr gave him a lot of attention (Bohr was a the real hero scientist, sort of a manly man scientist for all seasons), but all of Einstein's decades of thought towards a GUT produced no results. After 1915, other than his plagiarism of Schwarzschild's work (following his plagiarism of David Hilbert's work), Albert Einstein did not again contribute anything to the annals of Physics or Cosmology. He became somewhat of a unfaithful husband and womanizer of his own young female students at Princeton. No judgements here. Who wouldn't have done similarly given the same opportunity? Coeds, right? They were randy for him. He had no ability to resist it.
None of these ideas are mine.