Gunnar Nordström

Gunnar Nordström ( born March 12, 1881 in Helsinki, † December 24, 1923 ) was a Finnish theoretical physicist who is known for his theory of gravitation, which was an early competitor of general relativity.

Nordstrom received his doctorate in 1908 at the University of Helsinki, where he was a lecturer. Later, he worked for several years in Leiden and in 1918 professor at the Technical University of Helsinki.

1914 published his theory Nordström, which contained an additional spatial dimension and thus could simultaneously describe gravitation and electromagnetism, the first theory with an extra dimension; such theories are now known as the Kaluza-Klein theories.

During his time in Leiden Nordström solved the field equations for the spherically - symmetric charged body, expanding the result of Hans Reissner for a point charge. The metric for non-rotating charge distributions is now known as the Reissner - Nordström metric.

Nordstrom died in December 1923 at the age of 42 years.