Lara Thurnherr

Fritz Zwicky was an interesting character.

He is a fairly unknown figure in everyday Swiss jargon – as well as in historical research. This is somewhat comical given his many far-reaching and relatively diverse achievements. After studying and working as an assistant at the ETH, Fritz Zwicky became a Rockefeller Fellow and later an associate Professor at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech). After being appointed Full Professor of Astrophysics at CalTech in 1942, he became Scientific Director of the Aerojet Engineering Company in 1943. The rest of Fritz Zwicky’s life was marked by an active and successful research career. He held some four dozen patents related to jets and thrust and is sometimes referred to as the father of the jet engine. He also conducted research in crystals , gas ionisation, solid state physics, slow electron research and thermodynamics, discovered most of the supernovae known at the time of his death, and foresaw both the concept of dark matter and the use of galaxies as gravitational lenses.
Additionally, he wrote quite a lot of books (such as “Morphological Astronomy” (1956) ) and expert reports for the American government (for example “Morphology of propulsive power”(1944), the “Report on Certain Phases of War Research in Germany”, 1947, or the “Report on Certain Phases of Basic Research in Germany,” written in 1947, published in 1955.) Last but not least, he attempted to popularise his method of “morphological analysis.” Stephan Maurers writes: “Zwicky credited the technique for most of his insights.” He gave his first lectures on it in 1946. His series of lectures at ETH Zurich on morphology in 1956 was published as a book in 1959: “Morphological Research.” Similar to the subsequent books “Discovering, Inventing, Researching” (1966) and “Everyone a Genius” (1971), the book was about promoting and explaining the morphological method.
The method consists of the combination of different properties of already known solutions to other, new, and possibly better solutions.

Several biographies (though not nearly enough biographies) have been written about him. This Year, the book “Fritz Zwicky und die Atombombe” ( a novel with an extensive historical fact-check) will come out. I haven’t read it, so I don’t know whether I should recommend it. But there are some other, very recommendable biographies ( in German and in English)!

• Alfred Stöckli / Roland Müller: „Fritz Zwicky, Astrophysiker; Genie mit Ecken und Kanten“; Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2008 (English Translation available)
• John Johnson Jr.: „Zwicky, The Outcast Genius, Who Unmasked The Universe“; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. USA, 2019.

For someone who doesn’t like books: Here is a cool short version, filled with nice anecdotes, illustrating the special personality of this person.

One of his favorite jokes was to call enemies “spherical bastards” (“spherical,” he explained, because they still looked like bastards from every possible angle).

Maurer, Stephan: Idea Man. Page 24.