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Edwin Ernest Salpeter
 
 
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Edwin Ernest Salpeter (3 December 1924 - 26 November 2008) was an Austrian-Australian-American astrophysicist. He emigrated from Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
 to Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
 while in his teens. He received his PhD
PHD

PHD may refer to:* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian reform organization* PHD, a track on The Crystal Method album Tweekend* PHD finger, a protein sequence...
 from Birmingham University in 1948, under supervision of Sir Rudolf Peierls
Rudolf Peierls

Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, , was a Germany-born British physicist. Rudolph Peierls had a major role in Britain's nuclear program, but he also had a role in many modern sciences....
, since when he has been at Cornell University
Cornell University

Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university with four Statutory college. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and Education City, Qatar....
. He was, most recently, the James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor of the Physical Sciences, Emeritus
Emeritus

Emeritus is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop or other professional. Emerita was used for women, but is rarely used today....
. Salpeter died of leukemia at his home in Ithaca on November 26, 2008.






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Edwin Ernest Salpeter (3 December 1924 - 26 November 2008) was an Austrian-Australian-American astrophysicist. He emigrated from Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
 to Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
 while in his teens. He received his PhD
PHD

PHD may refer to:* Parisada Hindu Dharma, an Indonesian reform organization* PHD, a track on The Crystal Method album Tweekend* PHD finger, a protein sequence...
 from Birmingham University in 1948, under supervision of Sir Rudolf Peierls
Rudolf Peierls

Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, , was a Germany-born British physicist. Rudolph Peierls had a major role in Britain's nuclear program, but he also had a role in many modern sciences....
, since when he has been at Cornell University
Cornell University

Cornell University located in Ithaca, New York, USA, is a private university with four Statutory college. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and Education City, Qatar....
. He was, most recently, the James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor of the Physical Sciences, Emeritus
Emeritus

Emeritus is an adjective that is used in the title of a retired professor, bishop or other professional. Emerita was used for women, but is rarely used today....
. Salpeter died of leukemia at his home in Ithaca on November 26, 2008. Cornell University will hold a memorial service for him on Saturday, March 14.

Scientific contributions

In 1951 Salpeter suggested that star
Star

A star is a massive, luminous ball of Plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth....
s could burn helium-4
Helium-4

Helium-4 is a non-radioactive and light isotope of helium. It is by far the most abundant of the two naturally occurring isotopes of helium, making up about 99.99986% of the helium on earth....
 into carbon-12
Carbon-12

Carbon-12 is the most Abundance of the two Stable_isotope isotopes of the element carbon, accounting for 98.89% of carbon; it contains 6 protons, 6 neutrons, and 6 electrons....
 with the Triple-alpha process
Triple-alpha process

The triple alpha process is a set of nuclear fusion reactions by which three helium nuclei are transformed into carbon.Older stars start to accumulate helium produced by the proton-proton chain reaction and the CNO cycle in their cores....
 not directly, but through an intermediate metastable state of beryllium-8, which helped to explain the carbon production in stars. He later derived the initial mass function
Initial mass function

The initial mass function is an empirical function that describes the mass distribution of a population of stars in terms of their theoretical initial mass ....
 for the formation rates of stars of different mass in the Galaxy
Milky Way

The Milky Way, sometimes called simply the Galaxy, is the galaxy in which the Solar System is located. It is a barred spiral galaxy that is part of the Local Group of galaxies....
.

Salpeter wrote with Hans Bethe
Hans Bethe

Hans Albrecht Bethe was a Germany-United States physicist, and Nobel laureate in Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis....
 two articles in 1951 which introduced the equation bearing their names, the Bethe-Salpeter equation
Bethe-Salpeter equation

The Bethe-Salpeter equation describes the bound state of a two-body quantum mechanics system in a relativisticly covariant formalism.Examples of two-particle systems described by the Bethe-Salpeter equation are the positronium, bound state of an electron-positron pair; and, in condensed matter physics, the exciton, bound state of an electr...
 which describes the interactions between a pair of fundamental particles
Elementary particle

In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a wiktionary:particle not known to have substructure; that is, it is not known to be made up of smaller particles....
 under a quantum field theory
Quantum field theory

Quantum field theory or QFT provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanics models of systems classically described by field or of Many-body problem....
.

In 1964 Salpeter and independently Yakov B. Zel'dovich were the first to suggest that accretion disc
Accretion disc

An accretion disc is a structure formed by diffuse material in orbital motion around a central body. The central body is typically a young star, a protostar, a white dwarf, a neutron star, or a black hole....
s around massive black hole
Black hole

In general relativity, a black hole is a region of space in which the gravitational field is so powerful that nothing, including electromagnetic radiation , can escape its pull after having fallen past its event horizon....
s are responsible for the huge amounts of energy radiated by quasars (which are the brightest active galactic nuclei
Active galactic nucleus

An active galactic nucleus is a compact region at the centre of a galaxy which has a much higher than normal luminosity over some or all of the electromagnetic spectrum ....
). This is currently the most accepted explanation for the physical origin of active galactic nuclei and the associated extragalactic relativistic jet
Relativistic jet

Relativistic jets are extremely powerful jets of Plasma which emerge from the centers of some active galaxy, notably radio galaxy and quasars....
s.

Honors

  • Carnegie Institution for Science
    Carnegie Institution for Science

    The Carnegie Institution for Science is a organization in the United States established to support scientific research....
     Award for Research in Astrophysics (1959)
  • Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
    Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

    The Gold Medal is the highest award of the Royal Astronomical Society....
     (1973)
  • Henry Norris Russell Lectureship
    Henry Norris Russell Lectureship

    The Henry Norris Russell Lectureship is awarded each year by the American Astronomical Society in recognition of a lifetime of excellence in astronomical research....
     (1974)
  • J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize of the University of Miami
    University of Miami

    The University of Miami is a private, non-sectarian university founded in 1925 in the city of Coral Gables, Florida, Florida, United States, a historic suburb of Miami, Florida....
     (1974)
  • Karl Schwarzschild Medal
    Karl Schwarzschild Medal

    The Karl Schwarzschild Medal, named after the astrophysicist Karl Schwarzschild, is an award presented by the Astronomische Gesellschaft to eminent astronomers and astrophysicists....
     (1985)
  • Bruce Medal
    Bruce Medal

    The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal is awarded every year by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to astronomy....
     (1987)
  • Crafoord Prize
    Crafoord Prize

    The annual Crafoord Prize is a science prize established in 1980 by Holger Crafoord, a Swedish industrialist, and his wife Anna-Greta Crafoord....
     (with Fred Hoyle
    Fred Hoyle

    Sir Fred Hoyle Fellow of the Royal Society was an England astronomer primarily remembered today for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other Cosmology and scientific matters, in particular his rejection of the Big Bang theory....
    ) (1997)


External links