Ludwig Flamm (nonfiction)

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Ludwig Flamm (29 January 1885 - 4 December 1964) was an Austrian physicist.

Biography

Flamm, who came from a family of watchmakers, studied physics at the University of Vienna. In 1916 he was awarded the pro venia legendi at the Technische Universität Wien and in 1919 achieved a professorship. From 1922 to 1956 Flamm was a full professor and board member for physics at the Technische Universität Wien. He acted as dean from 1929 to 1931 and as rector from 1930 to 1931. Flamm was also a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Flamm was married to Elsa, the youngest daughter of Ludwig Boltzmann. His son Dieter Flamm was a university professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Vienna since 1973.

Work

Ludwig Flamm worked in various areas of theoretical physics, including quantum mechanics and the general relativity theory, and concerning the Schwarzschild metric, "Flamm's paraboloid". He was the first to describe solutions that lead to connections, now called wormholes, in the spacetime continuum.

See also

  • Schwarzschild metric (nonfiction) - In Einstein's theory of general relativity, the Schwarzschild metric (also known as the Schwarzschild vacuum or Schwarzschild solution) is the solution to the Einstein field equations that describes the gravitational field outside a spherical mass, on the assumption that the electric charge of the mass, angular momentum of the mass, and universal cosmological constant are all zero. The solution is a useful approximation for describing slowly rotating astronomical objects such as many stars and planets, including Earth and the Sun. It was found by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, and around the same time independently by Johannes Droste, who published his much more complete and modern-looking discussion only four months after Schwarzschild. According to Birkhoff's theorem, the Schwarzschild metric is the most general spherically symmetric vacuum solution of the Einstein field equations.