SCHILD, ALFRED (1921–1977). Alfred Schild, physicist, was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1921 to German-speaking parents. He attended a university in England. When World War II started, he was interned because he had a German passport. He was sent to Canada, at which time he was allowed to continue his education. Schild enrolled at the University of Toronto, where he completed his bachelor of arts in 1944 and his master of arts and doctorate by 1946. While at the University of Toronto, he was taught by Leopold Infeld, a close colleague of Albert Einstein. This association led Schild to a deep interest in relativity. During this time he married Winnifred Zara Beames, with whom he had three children. In 1946 Schild joined the staff at Carnegie Institute of Technology. In 1957 he joined the staff at the University of Texas. He was named one of the first Ashbel Smith professors in 1963 and cofounded the first Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics. He was also one of the founders of the International Committee on Gravitation and General Relativity, the Center for Particle Theory, the Center for Statistical Mechanics, and the Center for Relativity Theory at the University of Texas.
Besides his university work in 1959 Schild also helped develop the "atomic clock," which checked the theory of relativity in space. He was a member of the Canadian Congress of Mathematics and the American Mathematical Society. He coauthored "Tensor Calculus" with John L. Synge in 1949. He also wrote many other scientific papers that were published in scientific and mathematical journals. Schild protested the Vietnam War and worked for the rights of his students. He died on May 24, 1977, in Downer's Grove, Illinois, while conducting research at the Argonne National Laboratory.
Austin American-Statesman, May 25, 1977. Daily Texan, October 24, 1963. Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Amanda Oren, "Schild, Alfred," accessed February 26, 2017, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsc48.
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