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Sir Isaac Newton talks about gravity in his publication, "Principia." The main force in a black hole is the gravity it creates.
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John Michell "Conjectured that there might be an object massive enough to have an escape velocity greater than the speed of light." Which means that light could not escape the gravity of the massive object.
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Predicted the existence of black holes after studying the subject of escape velocity.
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Albert Einstein published his famous work called Theory of General Relativity. In his work he predicted spactime curvature. Which explains why things orbit around heavier objects.
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Karl Schwarz used Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity to explain a black hole. He explainedthe gravitational radius of black holes which he later called Schwarzchild Radius.
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Sir Arthur Eddington opposed black hole theory as did Einstein. He did not believe that gravitional collapse could produce a black hole.
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He started a theory of White Dwarfs that led to an understanding of mass and how it relates to a star becoming a white dwarf, neutron star or black hole.
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J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote a paper which stated that the fate of a heavy star is to collapse thus cutting itself off from the outside world.
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Roy Kerr, a mathematician, showed that massive stars will almost 'drag' spacetime around them like water going down a shower drain.
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Schmidt discovered a quasar is one of the most powerful objects in the universe. His discoveries leads to the dicovery that all quasars are powered by a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy.
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Coined the term black hole.
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Discovered the densest matter found though observations, at the time, was neutron stars.
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Found the modern theory of black holes which we still use today.
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The first black hole candidate that astronomers though was the best proof of a black hole.
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Provides very strong evidence that supermassive black holes are the centers of some galaxies. "The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) revealed large orbiting velocities around the nucleus of these galaxies, suggesting a huge mass inside a very small region."
