The modern theoretical prediction of black holes came as a spectacular consequence of German-American physicist Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein's theory predicted that massive stars ultimately collapse into black holes with gravitational fields so intense that not even light can escape. In 1969, American physicist John A. Wheeler popularized the term black hole. During the later half of the twentieth century the discovery of, and physics associated with, black holes became one of the preeminent quests of modern astronomy.

In the 1930s Indian-born American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar mathematically proved that black holes were the remains of massive stars and fully articulated the evolution of stars into supernova, white dwarfs, neutron stars or black holes. Before the intervention of WWII, American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who ultimately supervised project Trinity (the making of the first atomic bombs), made detailed calculations reconciling Chandrasekhar's predictions with general relativity...