BornVienna, Austria, 29 January 1885
DiedVienna, Austria, 4 December 1964
The scientific contributions of Ludwig Flamm concern theoretical physics. This researcher from the University of Vienna was one of the first to understand – rather intuitively – the meaning and possible consequences of the 4-D structure of spacetime in the framework of general relativity theory. In a 1916 article, he visualized the spatial curvature of the Schwarzschild metric by a surface shaped as a paraboloid, giving the first hint of possible spacetime “shortcuts” for which 50 years later the American physicist John Wheeler coined the popular term “wormhole.”
Ludwig Flamm was born into a family of Austrian retailers. He studied physics at the University of Vienna and got his diploma in 1909 with a dissertation on wave mechanics entitled Eigentliche Wellensysteme. Next he became an assistant to Gustav Jäger (1865–1938) at the Technischen Hochschule (Technical School of Advanced Studies) of Vienna. He got his...
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Algebraische Elektrodynamik. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Math.-nat. Klasse 2a, 144. Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Wien 1935.
Beiträge zur Einsteinschen Gravitationstheorie (Comments on Einstein’s Theory of Gravity), Physikalische Zeitschrift 17, 448 (1916).
Der Mechanismus elektromagnetischer Wellen. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Math.-nat. Kl. Abt. 2a, Bd. 134, 1954, H. 1–10. Springer, Wien 1945.
Die Grundlagen der Wellenmechanik. In: Physikalische Zeitschrift 27 S. 600–617, 1926.
Die grundlegenden Vorstellungen der Wellenmechanik. In: Elektrotechnik und Maschinenbau. 51. 1933, 30. Mally, Wien 1933.
Die Linienmechanik der elektrischen Feldmaterie. In: Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Math.-nat. Kl. Abt. 2a, Bd. 155. 1947, H. 7–8. Springer, Wien 1947.
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Zum 50. Todestag Ludwig Boltzmann. Physikalische Blätter 12, 9 S. 408–411, 1956.
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Luminet, JP. (2014). Flamm, Ludwig. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_9269
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