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Fritz Zwicky
Sign in to saveSwiss astronomer who posited dark matter (1898–1974)
Fritz Zwicky was a Swiss astronomer who, in the early 20th century, proposed the existence of dark matter—invisible material that makes up a significant portion of the universe—based on his observations of galaxy clusters. His work matters because it laid the foundation for one of modern astronomy's biggest unsolved mysteries: understanding what dark matter is and how it shapes the structure of the cosmos.
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Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Fritz
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- Switzerland
- Place of birth
- Varna
- Place of death
- Pasadena
- Occupation
- astrophysicist
- Educated at
- ETH Zurich
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Religion
- atheism
- Doctoral advisor
- Paul Scherrer
- Field of work
- astrophysics
- Image
- ETH-BIB-Zwicky, Fritz (1898-1974)-Portr 01030 (cropped).tif
- Residence
- United States
Show 9 more facts
- maintained by WikiProject
- WikiProject Mathematics
- date of death
- 1974-02-08
- date of birth
- 1898-02-14
- Commons category
- Fritz Zwicky
- nominated for
- Nobel Prize in Physics
- name in native language
- Fritz Zwicky
- member of
- American Physical Society
- place of burial
- Mollis
- municipal affiliation of a Swiss national
- Mollis
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Encyclopedic overview
Fritz Zwicky (/ˈtsvɪki/; German: [ˈtsvɪki]; February 14, 1898 – February 8, 1974) was a Swiss astronomer. He worked most of his life at the California Institute of Technology in the United States of America, where he made many important contributions in theoretical and observational astronomy. He was the first to propose supernovas as giant explosions at the end of a star's life, and neutron stars as the remnants left over after supernovas. In 1933, Zwicky proposed that unseen dark matter would explain the much higher mass required to explain velocity dispersion in the Coma Cluster, compared to mass calculated from luminosity data.
Biography
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Fritz Zwicky” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.