Peter Joseph William Debye (March 24, 1884 - November 2, 1966) (born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije) was a Dutch physical chemist. March 24 is the 83rd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (84th in Leap years). ... 1884 is a leap year starting on Tuesday (click on link to calendar). ... November 2 is the 306th day of the year (307th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 59 days remaining. ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... Physical chemistry is the study of the physical basis of chemical systems and processes. ...

Early life

Peter "Pie" Debye was born in Maastricht and after attending local schools in Maastricht went to the University of Aachen, Germany, only 30 km from Maastricht, in 1901. He studied mathematics and classical physics, and in 1905 received a degree in electrical engineering. In 1907 he published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents. At Aachen he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye. Maastricht (Limburgish: Mestreech; French: Maestricht; local dialect: Mestreech) is a municipality, and capital of the province of Limburg. ... The RWTH Aachen University is a large university located in Aachen (Germany). ... 1901 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Mathematics is the study of quantity, structure, space and change. ... When stuff moves. ... 1905 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with the study and application of electricity and electromagnetism. ... 1907 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... In fluid dynamics, an eddy is the swirling of a fluid and the reverse current (water) created when the fluid flows past an obstacle. ... Arnold Johannes Sommerfeld (December 5, 1868 - April 26, 1951) was a German physicist who introduced the fine-structure constant in 1919. ...

In 1906, Sommerfeld received an appointment at Munich, and took Debye with him as his assistant. He got his Ph. D. with a dissertation on radiation pressure in 1908. In 1910 he derived the Planck radiation formula using a method which Max Planck agreed was simpler than his own method. 1906 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Munich: Frauenkirche and Town Hall steeple Munich (German: München (pronounced listen) is the state capital of the German state of Bavaria. ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Electromagnetic radiation exerts a pressure upon any surface exposed to it. ... 1908 is a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1910 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Black body spectrum as a function of wavelength In physics, the spectral intensity of electromagnetic radiation from a black body at temperature T is given by the Plancks law of black body radiation: where: I(ν) is the amount of energy per unit time per unit surface area per unit... Max Planck This article is about Planck, the German physicist. ...

In 1911, when Albert Einstein took an appointment as a professor at Prague, Debye took his old professorship at Zürich. This was followed by moves to Utrecht in 1912, Göttingen in 1913, back to Zürich in 1920, to Leipzig in 1927, and to Berlin in 1934, where he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, saw to the construction of new laboratories, and developed it into the now-world-regarded Max Planck Institute in 1938. 1911 is a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Albert Einstein, by Yousuf Karsh Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born American theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. ... Prague (Praha in Czech) is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. ... Zürich (in English often Zurich, IPA ) is the largest city in Switzerland (population: 366,145 in 2004; population of urban area: 1,091,732) and capital of the canton of Zürich. ... Utrecht is a municipality and the capital city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. ... 1912 is a leap year starting on Monday. ... Map of Germany showing Göttingen 1 External links Coat of Arms University of Göttingen Top: The old Auditorium Maximum (1862-65) Bottom: New library building Göttingen is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany. ... 1913 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... 1920 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... Map of Germany showing Leipzig   Leipzig? [ˈlaiptsɪç] (Polish; Sorbian/Lusatian: Lipsk) is the largest city in the federal state (Bundesland) of Saxony in Germany. ... 1927 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...   Berlin? (pronounced: , German ) is the capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,426,000 inhabitants (as of January 2005); down from 4. ... 1934 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (in German Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft) was the name of a number of scientific institutes in Germany before World War II. After 1945 they were re-organised and renamed as Max Planck Institutes. ... The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. ... 1938 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...

In 1913 he married Mathilde Alberer. They had a son and a daughter; their son (Peter P. Debye) became a physicist and collaborated with Debye in some of his researches. 1913 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ...

Scientific contributions prior to the Nobel Prize

• His first major scientific contribution was the application of the concept of dipole moment to the charge distribution in asymmetric molecules in 1912, developing equations relating dipole moments to temperature, dielectric constant, debye relaxation, etc. In consequence, molecular dipole moments are measured in debyes, a unit named in his honor.
• Also in 1912, he extended Albert Einstein's theory of specific heat to lower temperatures by including contributions from low-frequency phonons. See Debye model.
• in 1913, he extended Niels Bohr's theory of atomic structure, introducing elliptical orbits, a concept also introduced by Arnold Sommerfeld.
• In 1914-1915, he calculated the effect of temperature on X-ray diffraction patterns of crystalline solids with Paul Scherrer. (The "Debye-Waller" factor)
• In 1923, with his assistant Erich Hückel, he developed an improvement of Svante Arrhenius' theory of electrical conductivity in electrolytic solutions. Although an improvement was made to the Debye-Hückel equation in 1926 by Lars Onsager, the theory is still regarded as a major forward step in our understanding of electrolytic solutions.
• Also in 1923, he developed a theory to explain the Compton effect, the shifting of the frequency of X-rays when they interact with electrons.

This article is about the electromagnetic phenomenon. ... Electric charge is a fundamental conserved property of some subatomic particles, which determines their electromagnetic interactions. ... A molecule is the smallest particle of a pure chemical substance that still retains its chemical composition and properties. ... 1912 is a leap year starting on Monday. ... The dielectric constant εr (represented as or K in some cases) is defined as the ratio: where εs is the static permittivity of the material in question, and ε0 is the vacuum permittivity. ... Debye relaxation is the dielectric relaxation response of an ideal, noninteracting population of dipoles to an alternating external electric field. ... 1912 is a leap year starting on Monday. ... Albert Einstein, by Yousuf Karsh Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born American theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. ... The specific heat capacity (symbol c or s, also called specific heat) of a substance is defined as heat capacity per unit mass. ... A phonon is a quantized mode of vibration occurring in a rigid crystal lattice, such as the atomic lattice of a solid. ... In thermodynamics and solid state physics, the Debye model is a method of calculating the phonon contribution to the specific heat (heat capacity) in a solid. ... 1913 is a common year starting on Wednesday. ... Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (October 7, 1885 – November 18, 1962) was a Danish physicist who made essential contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics. ... Properties For alternative meanings see atom (disambiguation). ... Arnold Johannes Sommerfeld (December 5, 1868 - April 26, 1951) was a German physicist who introduced the fine-structure constant in 1919. ... 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... 1915 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... X-ray crystallography is a technique in crystallography in which the pattern produced by the diffraction of x-rays through the closely spaced lattice of atoms in a crystal is recorded and then analyzed to reveal the nature of that lattice. ... Quartz crystal A crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. ... Paul Scherrer (1890-1969) was a Swiss physicist. ... 1923 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Erich Armand Arthur Joseph Hückel (August 9, 1896 - February 16, 1980) was a German physicist and physical chemist. ... Svante August Arrhenius (February 19, 1859 – October 2, 1927) was a Swedish chemist and one of the founders of the science of physical chemistry. ... 1926 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ... Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903-October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian physical chemist, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ... 1923 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... In quantum mechanics, the Compton effect, observed by Arthur Compton in 1923, is the increase in wavelength which occurs when X-ray photons with energies of around 0. ... In the NATO phonetic alphabet, X-ray represents the letter X. An X-ray picture (radiograph) taken by Röntgen An X-ray is a form of electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength approximately in the range of 5 pm to 10 nanometers (corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 PHz... Properties The electron is a subatomic particle. ...

His Nobel Prize

In 1936, Debye was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (entry at nobelprize.org) "for his contributions to the study of molecular structure," primarily referring to his work on dipole moments and X-ray diffraction. 1936 was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... List of Nobel Prize laureates in Chemistry from 1901 to the present day. ...

Later life

In 1938 the Nazi government began to insist that Debye give up his Dutch citizenship and become a German citizen. Debye did not want to do so, and since he had been offered a chance to give a series of lectures at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, traveled to the United States of America. He ended up staying at Cornell, became a professor (and, for 10 years, chairman of the chemistry department, and member of Alpha Chi Sigma) there, and in 1946 became an American citizen. Unlike the European phase of his life, where Debye moved from city to city every few years, in the United States he remained at Cornell for the whole remainder of his career. He retired in 1952, but continued research until his death. 1938 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Nazi party used a right-facing swastika as their symbol and the red and black colors were said to represent Blut und Boden (blood and soil). ... For other uses of the name Cornell, see Cornell (disambiguation). ... It has been suggested that Ithaca Commons be merged into this article or section. ... Coat of Arms Alpha Chi Sigma is a professional fraternity specializing in the field of chemistry. ... 1946 was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... A satellite composite image of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... 1952 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Much of his work at Cornell concerned the use of light-scattering techniques (derived from his X-ray scattering work of years earlier) to determine the size and molecular weight of polymer molecules. This started as a result of his work during World War II on synthetic rubber, but was extended to proteins and other macromolecules. The molecular mass of a substance (less accurately called molecular weight and abbreviated as MW) is the mass of one molecule of that substance, relative to the unified atomic mass unit u (equal to 1/12 the mass of one atom of carbon-12). ... A polymer is a generic term used to describe a substantially long molecule. ... A molecule is the smallest particle of a pure chemical substance that still retains its chemical composition and properties. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air, August 9, 1945 after the Allied atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. ... Synthetic rubber is a type of artificially-made polymer material which acts as an elastomer. ... A representation of the 3D structure of myoglobin, showing coloured alpha helices. ... A macromolecule is a molecule of high relative molecular mass, the structure of which essentially comprises the multiple repetition of units derived, actually or conceptually, from molecules of low relative molecular mass. ...

In April 1966 he suffered a heart attack, and in November of that year a second, which proved fatal. April is the fourth month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four with the length of 30 days. ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... A myocardial infarction occurs when an atherosclerotic plaque slowly builds up in the inner lining of a coronary artery and then suddenly ruptures, totally occluding the artery and preventing blood flow downstream. ... November is the eleventh month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of four Gregorian months with the length of 30 days. ...

Miscellaneous

In plasma physics, the phenomenon of Debye shielding, where a plasma shields out an electro-static field, and the Debye length, the characteristic extent of this shielding, are named after him. A Plasma lamp In physics and chemistry, a plasma is an ionized gas, and is usually considered to be a distinct phase of matter. ... Screening is the damping of electric fields caused by the presence of mobile charge carriers. ... The word plasma has a Greek root which means to be formed or molded (the word plastic shares this root). ... In plasma physics, the Debye length, named after the Dutch physical chemist Peter Debye, is the scale over which mobile charge carriers (e. ...