Erwin Finlay-Freundlich

Who was Erwin Finlay-Freundlich?

Erwin Finlay-Freundlich was a German astronomer, a pupil of Felix Klein. He was born in Biebrich, Germany to Friedrich Freundlich and Ellen Finlayson. Freundlich was a working associate of Albert Einstein and introduced experiments for which the general theory of relativity could be tested by astronomical observations based on the gravitational redshift.

After finishing his thesis with Felix Klein at the University of Göttingen in 1910, he became assistant at the Observatory in Berlin, where he became associated with Einstein. During a solar eclipse expedition in 1914 to verify general relativity, World War I broke out and he was interned in Russia. After the war, he was engaged in construction of a solar observatory in Potsdam, the Einsteinturm, and he was director of the Einstein-Institut. In 1933 Hitler came to power and Freundlich was forced to leave Germany; he had a Jewish grandmother and his wife was Jewish. He was appointed professor at the University of Istanbul, which was reformed by Kemal Atatürk with the help of many German scholars. In 1937 he left Istanbul to take up the post of professor of astronomy at the Charles University of Prague, but this appointment was terminated by the German occupation. On the recommendation of Arthur Stanley Eddington he went to St. Andrews University in Scotland. From 1951 to 1959 he was John Napier professor of Astronomy. On his retirement he returned to his native town Wiesbaden and was appointed professor at the University of Mainz. Freundlich died in Wiesbaden, Germany.