Ad Lagendijk (born 18 November 1947 in

Zwanenburg Zwanenburg () is a town in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Haarlemmermeer, and lies about 11 km west of Amsterdam. Zwanenburg has a population of around 7,670.Statistics Netherlands (CBS), ''Gemeente ...

) is a Dutch physicist working at the FOM-institute AMOLF in Amsterdam and at the

University of Amsterdam The University of Amsterdam (abbreviated as UvA, nl, Universiteit van Amsterdam) is a public research university located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The UvA is one of two large, publicly funded research universities in the city, the other being ...

. He is also a part-time professor at the

University of Twente The University of Twente (Dutch: ''Universiteit Twente''; , abbr. ) is a public technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands. The university has been placed in the top 170 universities in the world by multiple central ranking tables. ...

Enschede Enschede (; known as in the local Twents dialect) is a municipality and city in the eastern Netherlands in the province of Overijssel and in the Twente region. The eastern parts of the urban area reaches the border of the German city of Gronau ...

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

Research

Ad Lagendijk is a physicist with a background in physical chemistry. Lagendijk studies the propagation of light in complex matter, especially materials that strongly scatter light. He has a large international impact in this field with a few hundred scientific publications.

Short biography

Ad Lagendijk received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam in 1974. From 1974 to 1981 he worked at the

University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp ( nl, Universiteit Antwerpen) is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UA'', but ''UAntwerpen'' is more recently used. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 stud ...

, Belgium. From 1981 he worked at the

where he holds a professorship in physics since 1984. In 1987 he also became a department head at the FOM-institute AMOLF. In 1998 he was elected member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

. In 2002 Lagendijk and his research group moved to the

. In 2005 he moved back to the FOM-Institute AMOLF with a part of his group, to found the Photon Scattering Group. Lagendijk gained fame outside physics as the author of columns in a national newspaper and as the author of the Survival Guide for Scientists, a book with advice in the areas of communication and presentation, intended for junior scientists. He actively blogs in Dutch and English. Professor Ad Lagendijk received the

Spinoza Prize The Spinoza Prize ( nl, Spinozapremie) is an annual award of 2.5 million euro, to be spent on new research given by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). The award is the highest scientific award in the Netherlands. It is named after the philosopher ...

of 2002 for his research on the propagation of light in strongly scattering media, a field that according to the jury, he defined himself and brought to maturity both experimentally and theoretically through his research.

Sources

Ad Lagendijk's homepageSpinoza 2002Survival Blog for ScientistsInterferentie Blog (Dutch)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lagendijk, Ad 1947 births Living people 20th-century Dutch physicists Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Scientists from Amsterdam Spinoza Prize winners University of Amsterdam alumni Academic staff of the University of Amsterdam Academic staff of the University of Twente 21st-century Dutch physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society