Engelbert Levin Schücking (May 23, 1926 – January 5, 2015), in English-language works often cited as E. L. Schucking, was a

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

professor at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. His research interests were theoretical

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

general relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount (lexicographer), Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in ...

Biography

Engelbert Levin Schücking was born on May 23, 1926, in

Hörde Hörde is a ''Stadtbezirk'' ("City District") and also a ''Stadtteil'' ('' Quarter'') in the south of the city of Dortmund, in Germany. Hörde is situated at 51°29' North, 7°30' West, and is at an elevation of 112 metres above mean sea level. ...

Westphalia Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the regio ...

. He manifested an interest in astronomy at a very early age, and by the age of fourteen, he was actively engaged in counting sunspots. He then studied mathematics and physics at the

University of Münster The University of Münster (german: Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, WWU) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over ...

, and later at

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

. His professors included prolific physicists

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent series ...

, Richard Becker and

Robert Pohl Robert Wichard Pohl (10 August 1884 – 5 June 1976) was a German physicist at the University of Göttingen. Nevill Francis Mott described him as the "father of solid state physics". See also: "Components of the solid state", Nevill Mott, New Sci ...

. He started working in the field of general relativity with the great German physicist

Pascual Jordan Ernst Pascual Jordan (; 18 October 1902 – 31 July 1980) was a German theoretical and mathematical physicist who made significant contributions to quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. He contributed much to the mathematical form of matrix ...

in Hamburg, in 1952, and he earned his PhD there in 1955. It is with P.Jordan that he found the locus of his life's work, namely the geometric aspects of general relativity and Einstein's field equations. He moved to the US in 1961, where he became Research associate, first at

Syracuse Syracuse may refer to: Places Italy *Syracuse, Sicily, or spelled as ''Siracusa'' *Province of Syracuse United States *Syracuse, New York **East Syracuse, New York **North Syracuse, New York *Syracuse, Indiana * Syracuse, Kansas *Syracuse, Miss ...

, then at

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. He moved to the

University of Texas The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

at Austin in 1962, where he became Professor of Physics. There, he started a group working on general relativity, comprising such first rate physicists as

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...

Roy Kerr Roy Patrick Kerr (; born 16 May 1934) is a New Zealand mathematician who discovered the Kerr metric, Kerr geometry, an exact solutions in general relativity, exact solution to the Einstein field equation of general relativity. His solution mo ...

Rainer K. Sachs Rainer Kurt "Ray" Sachs (born June 13, 1932) is a German-American mathematical physicist, with interests in general relativistic cosmology and astrophysics, as well as a computational radiation biologist. He is professor emeritus of Mathematics an ...

and

Jürgen Ehlers Jürgen Ehlers (; 29 December 1929 – 20 May 2008) was a German physicist who contributed to the understanding of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. From graduate and postgraduate work in Pascual Jordan's relativity research group ...

. In 1967, he was appointed as Professor of Physics at

, where he had many students, including some twenty successful PhD candidates. Some of these students went on to become famous specialists in the field of general relativity: Eli Honig, Richard Greene, C. V. Vishveshwara, to name but a few. He published numerous papers and co-authored many books about gravitation, cosmology, as well as black holes. In December 1996 a symposium was held in his honor at New York University. He died at the age of 88 on January 5, 2015, surrounded by family and friends in his Manhattan apartment in New York City, NY.

References

External links

Homepage at New York UniversityEngelbert Schucking Papers
New York University Archives 1926 births American relativity theorists German relativity theorists German cosmologists 2015 deaths 20th-century German physicists {{germany-physicist-stub