Michell’s research interests spanned several areas of science. He is described somewhat unflatteringly in contemporary accounts as “a little short man, of black complexion, and fat,” who was nonetheless “esteemed a very ingenious Man, and an excellent Philosopher.” For a small-town rector, he had some pretty impressive scientific connections: Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Priestley, and Henry Cavendish all visited him at some point in his career. But the true “father” of the black hole concept was a humble 18th century English rector named John Michell–a man so far ahead of his scientific contemporaries that his ideas languished in obscurity, until they were re-invented more than a century later.īorn in 1724, Michell attended Cambridge University and wound up teaching there for a time, before becoming rector of Thornhill, near the town of Leeds. We think of black holes as a 20th century invention, dating back to 1916, when Albert Einstein first published his theory of general relativity and fellow physicist Karl Schwarzschild used those equations to envision a spherical section of spacetime so badly warped around a concentrated mass that it is invisible to the outside world.
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