Martin Schwarzschild

An astrophysicist, and son of the physicist Karl Schwarzschild, who explained how stars evolve into red giants through hydrogen shell burning and the helium flash, and pioneered using digital computers to model stellar structure in his influential 1958 textbook. He also led the Stratoscope program, launching telescopes on high-altitude balloons to photograph the sun and planets above atmospheric distortion. He received the National Medal of Science in 1997.