The Tauranga mathematician and the King of Sweden

The Tauranga mathematician and the King of Sweden

We don't think of ourselves as a nation of scientists, but New Zealanders have been responsible for some major discoveries and experiments.

Ernest Rutherford famously split the atom, inventor Richard Pearse was pioneering in the field of aviation. Our female scientists have typically received less attention, but Joan Dingley was a world authority on a type of fungi, and Beatrice Tinsley researched the evolution of galaxies.

Well, residing in Tauranga is a mathematician so important a whole space-time system has been named after him, and he's just received part of a $1 million prize from the King of Sweden for his work on black holes.

In the 1964, Roy Kerr solved a mathematical riddle scientists had been struggling with for 40 years. Mr Kerr says nobody believed black holes existed -- nobody had seen one. 

One day, Prof Kerr was with the head of his laboratory when he had his eureka moment.

"I calculated for about half an hour, and then I said, 'It's rotating'. I didn't realise what a big deal it was. I was young, and I thought this sort of thing happened every day."

Prof Kerr's calculations had shown that rotating black holes were mathematically possible. The discovery was so significant that the Kerr metric was named after him.

Prof Kerr says his discovery was only the beginning.

"We now know that there's one in the centre of practically every galaxy, and they're not just random things. They may be the main reason why the galaxy stands in the first place."

Watch the video for the full Story report.