Hartland Sweet Snyder | |
---|---|
Born | 1913 Salt Lake City, U.S. |
Died | Berkeley, California, U.S. | May 22, 1962
Education | |
Known for | Courant–Snyder parameters Oppenheimer–Snyder model Strong focusing |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Theoretical physics |
Institutions | |
Doctoral advisor | J. Robert Oppenheimer |
Hartland Sweet Snyder (1913 – May 22, 1962) was an American physicist[1] who, together with J. Robert Oppenheimer, showed how large stars would collapse to form black holes.[2] This work modeled the gravitational collapse of a pressure-free homogeneous fluid sphere and found that it would be unable to communicate with the rest of the universe.[3] This discovery was depicted in the movie Oppenheimer, where Snyder was portrayed by actor Rory Keane.[4] Historian of physics David C. Cassidy assessed that this prediction of black holes might have won a Nobel Prize in Physics had the authors been alive in the 1990s when evidence was available.[5]
Some publications Snyder authored together with Ernest Courant laid the foundations for the field of accelerator physics.[6] In particular, Snyder with Courant and Milton Stanley Livingston developed the principle of strong focusing that made modern particle accelerators possible. The Courant–Snyder parameters, a method of characterizing the distribution of particles in a beam, were an important part of that contribution.[7]
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