bg Varna

Fritz Zwicky House

- Ivan Drasov Street 13 -
The residential building was built on the site of the old family house of Zwicky in 1908 by the Bulgarian architect Mihail Ivanov from . The Swiss physicist and astronomer Fritz Zwicky was born in the old family house on February 14, 1898. He was the son of Fridolin Zwicky, a Swiss merchant working in Bulgaria. His mother Franziska Wreck was an ethnic Czech from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1904, at the age of six, Fritz was sent to his grandparents in , Switzerland, with the intention of following an economic education there, like his father. However, his attention shifted to science.

From 1917 he studied mathematics and physics in where and were one of his teachers. Provided with a Rockefeller scholarship, Zwicky emigrated to the United States shortly after his promotion. He had been asked by to attend the California Institute of Technology, where he remained until his retirement in 1963.

Zwicky developed numerous cosmological theories that have had a profound influence on the understanding of our universe in the early 21st century. He coined the term "supernova" while fostering the concept of neutron stars. He was also the first to use the virial theorem to infer the existence of unseen dark matter.
Fritz Zwicky
The building is built in the styles of Eclectic and Art Nouveau and contains a lot of reliefs and geometric forms. On the northeastern corner of the building, you can see a tower like structure. The window on the second floor is surrounded by circles, squares, and rectangles, as well as a beautiful play of lines. The roof overhang that's supported by wooden is interrupted at some places by a window. The that are located underneath the windows on the first floor contain a vertical relief, which contrasts with horizontal relief lines that can be seen between the windows. On the west side of the building, between the two piers, you'll be able to see a segmental that on both sides ends with a .
An archived drawing of the building created in 1911
A memorial plaque for Fritz Zwicky was placed on the northern side of the building stating that he was born in this house.
The memorial plaque for Fritz Zwicky