The Black Holes And The World War I

Karl Schwarzschild

    

    After 10 years the publication of special relativity theory (SRT), Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published the general relativity theory (GRT) in November 1915, a new gravity theory (the most successful theory at that time was the Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation). Einstein himself thought that the field equations couldn't be solved  precisely.

Einstein Field Equations

    On that occasion the World War I happened and a German physicist and astronomer who was serving the German army provided the first exact solution to the Einstein fields equations of GRT in the same year. His name? Karl Schwarzschild. The solution formulated by Schwarzschild describes a spherical non-rotating mass, static, non-charged electrically, it's in fact a vacum solution and is usually called the schwarzschild spacetime. 

Schwarzschild Metric

    Unfortunately Schwarzschild died at age 42 from a disease developed while at Russian front, but his work was fundamental on black holes understanding.

    Looking for references? The reading of the book Biography of Karl Schwarzschild could help.