Hermann Bondi

Sir Hermann Bondi KCB FRS (1 November 1919 – 10 September 2005) was an Austrian-British mathematician and cosmologist. He is best known for developing the steady state model of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold as an alternative to the Big Bang theory. He contributed to the theory of general relativity, and was the first to analyze the inertial and gravitational interaction of negative mass and the first to explicate correctly the nature of gravitational waves. In his 1990 autobiography, Bondi regarded the 1962 work on gravitational waves as his "best scientific work". Bondi was born in Vienna, the son of a Jewish medical doctor. He was brought up in Vienna, where he studied at the Realgymnasium. He showed early prodigious ability at mathematics, and was recommended to Arthur Eddington by Abraham Fraenkel. Fraenkel was a distant relation, the only mathematician in the extended family and Hermann's mother had the foresight to arrange a meeting between her young son and the famous man knowing that this might be the key to enabling him to follow his wishes and become a mathematician himself. Eddington encouraged him to travel to England to read the mathematical tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge. He arrived in Cambridge in 1937, escaping from antisemitism in Austria.