Friendly, Erwin Finlay

Astrophysicist

Born: 19.05.1885 in Biebrich

Died: 24.07.1964 in Wiesbaden

Freundlich's father was a merchant; his mother, Ellen Finlayson, came from Scotland. After leaving school in Wiesbaden, he began studying shipbuilding engineering at the Technical University in Charlottenburg, which he had to abandon due to a heart condition. He studied mathematics, physics and astronomy in Göttingen and completed his studies in 1910 with a dissertation on analytical function theory.

In July 1910, he took up a position as an assistant at the Royal Observatory in Berlin. At that time, Albert Einstein was working on his general theory of relativity. In 1911, he asked Freundlich to closely examine the orbit of the planet Mercury in order to verify his theoretical considerations. Freundlich's observations supported Einstein's theory. Freundlich was the first person to fully grasp the significance of Einstein's theory of relativity.

In 1920, he initiated the "Einstein Foundation" in Potsdam to build the "Einstein Tower" as a solar observatory. Freundlich headed this facility, also known as the "Einstein Institute". Fruitful years of collaboration with Einstein followed. His publication "On the deviations of light in the gravitational field of the sun" made him world-famous.

He left Germany in 1933 because his wife, his nephew Hans and his niece Renate were Jewish. Both had been adopted by the Freundlich couple after the death of their sister-in-law in 1933. He accepted a professorship for astrophysics in Istanbul and built a modern observatory. In 1936, he accepted an appointment at Charles University in Prague. However, after the break-up of Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to the Netherlands. There he received a call to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he was to teach for 20 years. He set up his own astronomy faculty there and an observatory was built according to his plans.

The couple returned to Wiesbaden in 1959. Freundlich gave lectures and seminars on astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Mainz, which had made him an honorary professor.