Freundlich

Erwin Finlay Freundlich

Born: 29 May 1885 in Biebrich, Germany
Died: 24 July 1964 in Wiesbaden, Germany

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Finlay Freundlich was a student of Klein and worked with Einstein attempting in 1911 to make measurements of Mercury's orbit required to confirm the general theory of relativity. He confirmed it in a paper of 1913. Other tests of general relativity based on gravitational redshift were inconclusive. In 1918 he resigned his post in Berlin to work full time with Einstein.

Freundlich resigned when Hitler came to power in 1933 and emigrated to Turkey. He returned to Prague in 1937 but was forced out again by Hitler's policies in 1939. This time he came to St Andrews to set up a department of astronomy. Freundlich became the Napier Professor of Astronomy in 1951, a post he held until 1959.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Freundlich's work on general relativity

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. H von Klüber, Obituary Notice of Erwin Finlay Freundlich, Astronomische Nachrichten 288 (1964-65), 281-288.
  3. K Hentschel, Erwin Finlay Freundlich and Testing Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Archive for History of Exact Sciences 47 (1994), 143-201. 
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