Chronology of Black Hole Physics
| 1784 | John Michell discusses classical bodies which have escape velocities greater than the speed of light. |
| 1795 | Pierre Laplace discusses classical bodies which have escape velocities greater than the speed of light. |
| 1916 | Karl Schwarzschild solves the Einstein vacuum field equations for uncharged spherically symmetric systems. |
| 1918 | H. Reissner and G. Nordstrom solve the Einstein-Maxwell field equations for charged spherically symmetric systems. |
| 1923 | George Birkhoff proves that the Schwarzschild spacetime geometry is the unique spherically symmetric solution of the Einstein vacuum field equations. |
| 1939 | Robert Oppenheimer and Hartland Snyder calculate the collapse of a pressure-free homogeneous fluid sphere and find that it cuts itself off from communication with the rest of the universe. |
| 1963 | Roy Kerr solves the Einstein vacuum field equations for uncharged rotating systems. |
| 1964 | Roger Penrose proves that an imploding star will necessarily produce a singularity once it has formed an event horizon. |
| 1965 | Ezra Newman, E. Couch, K. Chinnapared, A. Exton, A. Prakash, and Robert Torrence solve the Einstein-Maxwell field equations for charged rotating systems. |
| 1968 | Brandon Carter uses Hamilton-Jacobi theory to derive first-order equations of motion for a charged particle moving in the external fields of a Kerr-Newman black hole. |
| 1969 | Roger Penrose discusses the Penrose process for the extraction of the spin energy from a Kerr black hole. |
| 1969 | Roger Penrose proposes the cosmic censorship hypothesis. |
| 1971 | Identification of Cygnus X-1/HDE 226868 as a binary black hole candidate system. |
| 1972 | Stephen Hawking proves that the area of a classical black hole's event horizon cannot decrease. |
| 1972 | James Bardeen, Brandon Carter, and Stephen Hawking propose four laws of black hole mechanics in analogy with the laws of thermodynamics. |
| 1972 | Jacob Bekenstein suggests that black holes have an entropy proportional to their surface area due to information loss effects. |
| 1974 | Stephen Hawking applies quantum field theory to black hole spacetimes and shows that black holes will radiate particles with a blackbody spectrum which can cause black hole evaporation. |
| 1989 | Identification of GS2023+338/V404 Cygni as a binary black hole candidate system. |