Lars Onsager was an American physical chemist and theoretical physicist.
20 Facts About Lars Onsager
2.
Lars Onsager held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University.
3.
Lars Onsager was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968.
4.
Lars Onsager traveled to Zurich, where Peter Debye was teaching, and confronted Debye, telling him his theory was wrong.
5.
Lars Onsager impressed Debye so much that he was invited to become Debye's assistant at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule, where he remained until 1928.
6.
In 1933, just before taking up the position at Yale, Lars Onsager traveled to Austria to visit electrochemist Hans Falkenhagen.
7.
Lars Onsager was told that he could submit one of his published papers to the Yale faculty as a dissertation, but insisted on doing a new research project instead.
8.
Lars Onsager's dissertation laid the mathematical background for his interpretation of deviations from Ohm's law in weak electrolytes.
9.
Lars Onsager quickly showed at Yale the same traits he had at JHU and Brown: he produced brilliant theoretical research, but was incapable of giving a lecture at a level that a student could comprehend.
10.
Lars Onsager was unable to direct the research of graduate students, except for the occasional outstanding one.
11.
In 1945, Onsager was naturalized as an American citizen, and the same year he was awarded the title of J Willard Gibbs Professor of Theoretical Chemistry.
12.
Lars Onsager proposed a theoretical explanation of the superfluid properties of liquid helium in 1949; two years later the physicist Richard Feynman independently proposed the same theory.
13.
Lars Onsager worked on the theories of liquid crystals and the electrical properties of ice.
14.
Lars Onsager developed important ideas on the quantization of magnetic flux in metals.
15.
Lars Onsager was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1958, Willard Gibbs Award in 1962, and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1968.
16.
Lars Onsager was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1959 and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1975.
17.
Lars Onsager then became a member of the Center for Theoretical Studies, University of Miami, and was appointed Distinguished University Professor of Physics.
18.
Lars Onsager developed interests in semiconductor physics, biophysics and radiation chemistry.
19.
Lars Onsager remained in Florida until his death from an aneurysm in Coral Gables, Florida in 1976.
20.
Lars Onsager was buried next to John Gamble Kirkwood at New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery.