Hermann Bondis 1952 paper On spherically symmetrical accretion is recognized as one of the foundations of accretion theory. Although Bondi later remarked that it was not much more than an examination exercise, his mathematical analysis of spherical accretion on to a point mass has found broad use across fields of astrophysics that were embryonic or non-existent at the time of the papers publication. In this non-technical review, I describe the motivations for Bondis work, and briefly discuss some of the applications of Bondi accretion in high energy astrophysics, galaxy formation, and star formation.
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