Which English scientist proposed “dark stars” that could trap light in 1783?

John Michell proposed “dark stars” that could trap light in 1783.

Michell was an English clergyman and natural philosopher who applied Newtonian ideas about gravity to light. He reasoned that a sufficiently massive and compact star could have an escape velocity greater than light’s speed, making it invisible. His proposal appeared in a letter to the Royal Society in 1783.

This was an important historical precursor to the modern black-hole concept, but it was not the same theory. Michell worked within Newtonian gravity, while modern black holes arise from Einstein’s general relativity, in which gravity is the curvature of spacetime. The terminology “black hole” would not be introduced until the 20th century.

Michell also made major contributions to astronomy, including early statistical reasoning about binary stars and an influential method for estimating the density of Earth. His dark-star idea was later independently developed by Pierre-Simon Laplace.