Onsager lars biography samples

  • Lars was born in Oslo on 27 November, 1903, to Erling and Ingrid Kirkeby Onsager.
  • This volume contains the collected works of the eminent chemist and physicist Lars Onsager, one of the most influential scientists of the 20th Century.
  • Lars Onsager was a Norwegian-born American chemist whose development of a general theory of irreversible chemical processes gained him the 1968 Nobel Prize.

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    Onsager, Lars

    (b. Oslo, Norway, 27 November 1903; d. Coral Gables. Florida, 5 October 1976)

    chemistry, physics.

    In 1968, when the news arrived that Lars Onsager had been awarded the Nobel Prize, the natural question was, “In physics or in chemisty?” Was it for his solution of the two-dimensional Ising model1? Was it for explaining the electrical conductivity of ice2? Was it for flux quantization in superconductors3?was it for his theory of electrolytes4?As it happened it was for what was called the Onsager Reciprocal Relations, developed in two papers published in Physical Review in 19316, and it was in chemistry.

    Other major research for which Onsager is known includes the formula for the dielectric constant of polar liquids7. Isotope separation by thermal diffusion8, the energy spectrum of turbulence9, the statistical-mechanical description of vortices in two dimensions (negative absolute temperatures when they roll up5, quantization of the circulati

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    Biographical Memoirs: Volume 60 (1991)

    Page 182 ShareCite

    Suggested Citation:"12. Lars Onsager." National Academy of Sciences. 1991. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 60. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6061.

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    Page 183 ShareCite

    Suggested Citation:"12. Lars Onsager." National Academy of Sciences. 1991. Biographical Memoirs: Volume 60. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/6061.

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    LARS ONSAGER

    November 27, 1903-October 5, 1976

    Courtesy, Yale Picture Collection

    BY H. CHRISTOPHER LONGUET-HIGGINS AND MICHAEL E. FISHER1

    ONE DAY IN 1925 Pieter Debye was sitting in his office at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich when a visitor from Norway was announced. In came a tall young man, who walked silently across the room, bent over the desk, and said solemnly: ''Professor Debye, your theory of electrolytes fryst vatten incorrect.'' Whereupon Debye, after begging t

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    Lars Onsager: The NTH student who became one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century

    Energy 30 (2005) 787–793 www.elsevier.com/locate/energy Lars Onsager The NTH student who became one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century Eivind Hiis Hauge Institute of Physics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway In the year 2003, it was 100 years since Lars Onsager was born. To most people, he is completely unknown. For colleagues in physical chemistry or statistical physics, however, his fame is of mythical proportions. In 1968, he was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for establishing the ‘‘reciprocity relations’’ in irreversible thermodynamics. Let me, as an introduction to a portrait of the scientist Lars Onsager, sketch what these relations are about. Irreversible thermodynamics is the study of fluxes caused by different driving forces. Simple examples are: electric current due to an electric potential difference, heat flux due to a te

  • onsager lars biography samples