Frank Shu developed a mathematical account of star formation through the gravitational collapse of isothermal gas spheres. His 1977 treatment used self-similarity to describe the flow after a central core had formed, reducing the evolving spatial problem to functions of a scaled coordinate.
In the inside-out collapse solution, an outward-moving expansion wave separates the still-static outer gas from an infalling inner region. Near the center the flow approaches free fall, and accreting material encounters a radiating shock wave at the core. The construction connects the initial cloud structure to the subsequent supply of mass to a growing protostar under explicit symmetry and temperature assumptions.[ref]
Self-Similar Collapse of Isothermal Spheres and Star Formation by Frank H. Shu. pp. 488–489, abstract and similarity formulation; expansion-wave solution
Portrait of Frank Shu
. SSR2000, own photograph, 19 October 2013. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
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