Learn More About Physics

Dutch-American theoretical physicist Peter Joseph Wilhelm Debye won the 1936 Nobel Prize in chemistry. He studied molecular structure, dipole movements, and X-ray and electron diffraction in gases.
Peter Joseph Wilhelm Debye (1884-1966), Dutch-American theoretical physicist, who received the 1936 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his studies in molecular structure, dipole movements, and the diffraction of X rays and electrons in gases.
Debye was born in Maastricht, March 24, 1884, and educated at the University of Munich. From 1911 to 1935 he held the post of professor of physics successively at several universities in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany. He then became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in Berlin. In the U.S., he served as professor of chemistry at Cornell University from 1940 to 1952; in 1952 he became professor emeritus. He died at Ithaca, New York, on November 2, 1966.
In 1912 Debye modified the specific-heat theory put forth by Albert Einstein by calculating the probability of any frequency of molecular vibration up to a maximum frequency; the theory of specific heat constituted one of the earliest theoretical successes of the quantum theory. Debye also applied the quantum theory to explain the heat conductivity of crystals at low temperature, the variation of saturation intensity of magnetization with temperature, the theory of space quantization (with the German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, 1868-1951), and the phenomena of scattering of X rays (with the American physicist Arthur Holly Compton). In 1923 Debye developed a theory of ionization of electrolytes (now called the Debye-Hückel theory), which is important in chemistry (see Ionization). Later he worked on the theory of quantum mechanics, including its applications to the diffraction of electrons in gases. In 1963 he was awarded the Priestley Medal by the American Chemical Society.
Among Debye's writings are Quantum Theory and Chemistry (1928), Polar Molecules (1929), and Molecule Structure (1931).