Friedrich Kottler (December 10, 1886 – May 11, 1965) was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

n theoretical

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

. He was a Privatdozent before he got a professorship in 1923 at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich hist ...

Life

In 1938, after the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

, he lost his professorship due to his

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

ancestry. With the help of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

and

Wolfgang Pauli Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (; ; 25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics ...

, he immigrated to America from his hometown of

Vienna, Austria en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, settling in

Rochester, New York Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...

, where he worked at the Eastman Kodak Research Laboratory. He died in Rochester, New York in 1965. Besides

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...

, Kottler's professional pursuits focused on the

theory of relativity The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in ...

Contributions to relativity

*In (1912), he presented a general covariant formulation of

Maxwell's equations Maxwell's equations, or Maxwell–Heaviside equations, are a set of coupled partial differential equations that, together with the Lorentz force law, form the foundation of classical electromagnetism, classical optics, and electric circuits. ...

, based on the

absolute differential calculus In mathematics, Ricci calculus constitutes the rules of index notation and manipulation for tensors and tensor fields on a differentiable manifold, with or without a metric tensor or connection. It is also the modern name for what used to be ...

, which is also valid within

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 ...

, before that theory was even developed. In relation to this, Einstein &

Marcel Grossmann Marcel Grossmann (April 9, 1878 – September 7, 1936) was a Swiss mathematician and a friend and classmate of Albert Einstein. Grossmann was a member of an old Swiss family from Zurich. His father managed a textile factory. He became a Profe ...

gave credit to Kottler in 1913. *In (1912, 1914a, 1914b, 1916a, 1916b, 1918, 1921) Kottler worked on the description of accelerations and rotations in flat

Minkowski space In mathematical physics, Minkowski space (or Minkowski spacetime) () is a combination of three-dimensional Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the iner ...

, using four-dimensional Frenet-Serret formulas and the corresponding orthonormal tetrads, and formulated the proper reference frames for worldlines of constant curvatures given by

Gustav Herglotz Gustav Herglotz (2 February 1881 – 22 March 1953) was a German Bohemian physicist best known for his works on the theory of relativity and seismology. Biography Gustav Ferdinand Joseph Wenzel Herglotz was born in Volary num. 28 to a public not ...

in 1909, in particular for

hyperbolic motion In geometry, hyperbolic motions are isometric automorphisms of a hyperbolic space. Under composition of mappings, the hyperbolic motions form a continuous group. This group is said to characterize the hyperbolic space. Such an approach to geom ...

(Kottler- Møller metric) and uniform circular motion. In (1916a), he also discussed the conformal spacetime transformations (related to the spherical wave transformation by

Harry Bateman Harry Bateman FRS (29 May 1882 – 21 January 1946) was an English mathematician with a specialty in differential equations of mathematical physics. With Ebenezer Cunningham, he expanded the views of spacetime symmetry of Lorentz and Poincare ...

and

Ebenezer Cunningham Ebenezer Cunningham (7 May 1881 in Hackney, London – 12 February 1977) was a British mathematician who is remembered for his research and exposition at the dawn of special relativity. Biography Cunningham went up to St John's College, Camb ...

in 1909) as an alternative way to introduce accelerated frames. *In (1916b) he criticized the role of the equivalence principle in general relativity, which prompted a reply by Einstein in the same year. *In (1918) he formulated the Kottler metric or Kottler spacetime (which has been described as "the only spherically symmetric solution of the Einstein vacuum field equations with a

cosmological constant In cosmology, the cosmological constant (usually denoted by the Greek capital letter lambda: ), alternatively called Einstein's cosmological constant, is the constant coefficient of a term that Albert Einstein temporarily added to his field eq ...

"), as well as the Kottler- Whittaker metric for a homogeneous gravitational field in flat spacetime. *In (1922a, 1922b) he argued that one can formulate Maxwell's equations and Newton's law of gravitation independently of any

metric Metric or metrical may refer to: * Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement * An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement Mathematics In mathem ...

. *In (1922c) he published the article "Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie" in Band 6 of

Klein's encyclopedia Felix Klein's ''Encyclopedia of Mathematical Sciences'' is a German mathematical encyclopedia published in six volumes from 1898 to 1933. Klein and Wilhelm Franz Meyer were organizers of the encyclopedia. Its full title in English is ''Encycloped ...

. *In (1924a, 1924b) he analyzed the

history of special relativity The history of special relativity consists of many theoretical results and empirical findings obtained by Albert A. Michelson, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and others. It culminated in the theory of special relativity proposed by Albert Eins ...

, focusing on the contributions of

Augustin-Jean Fresnel Augustin-Jean Fresnel (10 May 1788 – 14 July 1827) was a French civil engineer and physicist whose research in optics led to the almost unanimous acceptance of the wave theory of light, excluding any remnant of Newton's corpuscular th ...

, Hendrik Lorentz, Henri Poincaré and Einstein.

Published works

* 1912:
Über die Raumzeitlinien der Minkowski'schen Welt
', Wiener Sitzungsberichte 2a, 121: 1659–1759. (English Wikisource translation: On the spacetime lines of a Minkowski world) * 1914a:
Relativitätsprinzip und beschleunigte Bewegung
', Annalen der Physik 349 (13), 701-748 * 1914b:
Fallende Bezugssysteme vom Standpunkte des Relativitätsprinzips
', Annalen der Physik 349 (13), 701-748 * 1916a:
Beschleunigungsrelative Bewegungen und die konforme Gruppe der Minkowski'schen Welt
', Wiener Sitzungsberichte 2a, 125, 899-919 * 1916b:
Über Einsteins Äquivalenzhypothese und die Gravitation
', Annalen der Physik 355 (16), 955-972 * 1918:
Über die physikalischen Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Relativitätstheorie
', Annalen der Physik, 4. Folge, Bd.60, S.401-461 * 1921:
Rotierende Bezugssysteme in einer Minkowskischen Welt
', Physikalische Zeitschrift 22, 274-280 & 480-484 * 1922a: ''Newtonsches Gesetz und Metrik'', Wiener Sitzungsberichte 2a, 131: 1-14. (English translation by David Delphenich
Newton's laws and metrics
* 1922b: ''Maxwellsche Gleichungen und Metrik'', Wiener Sitzungsberichte 2a, 131: 119-146 (English translation by David Delphenich
Maxwell’s equations and metrics
* 1922c,
Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie
', Encyklopädie der mathematischen Wissenschaften mit Einschluss ihrer Anwendungen, 6.2.2, 159-237 * 1923
''Zur Theorie der Beugung an schwarzen Schirmen''
(''On the theory of diffraction at black screens''), Annalen der Physik, 375 (6): 405–56. * 1924a,
Considerations de critique historique sur la theorie de la relativite. Partie 1: De Fresnel à Lorentz
',

Scientia Scientia is the Latin word for knowledge. It may refer to: * 7756 Scientia *'' The Triumph of Science over Death'', a sculpture of Filipino hero José Rizal * ''Scientia'' (UTFSM journal), a scientific journal published by Universidad Técnica F ...

, 36, pp. 231–242 * 1924b,
Considerations de critique historique sur la theorie de la relativite. Partie 2: Henri Poincaré et Albert Einstein
', Scientia, 36, pp. 301–316

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kottler, Friedrich 1886 births 1965 deaths Austrian physicists Academics of the University of Vienna Austrian emigrants to the United States