Lars Onsager.
In: Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists, 1998-01-04, S. 997-999
Nachschlagewerk
Zugriff:
Lars Onsager was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway, in 1903. His family was middle class, and he grew up in comfortable surroundings. Following his graduation from secondary school, Onsager enrolled at the Norwegian Technical School in Trondheim, where he studied chemical engineering. It soon became clear that Onsager had a talent for science. In 1925, he traveled to Zurich, Switzerland, to discuss with noted physical chemist Peter J. W. Debye a correction that Onsager had found to Debye's theory of electrolytes in solution. Debye decided to take Onsager on as a research assistant. After two years in Switzerland, Onsager emigrated to the United States, where he had landed a job as an instructor in freshman chemistry at The Johns Hopkins University. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Brown University, where he continued to teach while conducting research. Onsager remained at Brown from 1928 to 1933. During this period, he worked on the problem of reciprocal relationships. Examples of these types of relationships had been known for more than a hundred years, but Onsager was able to develop a general theory that provided a systematic description for such relationships. Onsager's theory on reciprocal relationships was outlined in two papers published in 1931. He showed that for small departures from equilibrium, simple relationships can be found to describe the approach to equilibrium. Onsager's work soon found a variety of applications in nonequilibrium thermodynamics (the study of heat). Onsager himself used his theory to analyze thermal diffusion as a means for isotope separation. In the early 1940's, this work formed the basis for one separation method used to isolate the uranium 235 isotope in the development of the atomic bomb. INSET: Lars Onsager.
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Lars Onsager.
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Joens, Jeffrey A. |
Zeitschrift: | Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists, 1998-01-04, S. 997-999 |
Veröffentlichung: | 1998 |
Medientyp: | Nachschlagewerk |
ISBN: | 978-0-7614-7064-9 (print) |
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