Karl Schwarzschild

German physicist and astronomer who provided the first exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity, for the limited case of a single spherical non-rotating mass, which he accomplished in 1915, the same year that Einstein first introduced general relativity. The Schwarzschild solution, which makes use of Schwarzschild coordinates and the Schwarzschild metric, leads to a derivation of the Schwarzschild radius, which is the size of the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole.

Schwarzschild accomplished this while serving in the German army during World War I. He died the following year, on 11 May 1916, aged 42, in Potsdam, from the autoimmune disease pemphigus, which he developed while at the Russian front. Various forms of the disease particularly affect people of Ashkenazi Jewish origin.

He was the father of astrophysicist Martin Schwarzschild.

Asteroid 837 Schwarzschilda is named in his honour, as is the large crater Schwarzschild, on the far side of the moon.