Jan Peter Toennies (born 3 May 1930) is an American scientist and former director of the
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.
Early life and education
He was born in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to German immigrant parents. He is the grandson of sociologist
Ferdinand Tönnies
Ferdinand Tönnies (; 26 July 1855 – 9 April 1936) was a German sociologist, economist, and philosopher. He was a significant contributor to sociological theory and field studies, best known for distinguishing between two types of social gro ...
.
He graduated from
Lower Merion High School, outside of Philadelphia in 1948, from
Amherst College
Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educatio ...
, with a B.A. in 1952, and from
Brown University
Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...
, with a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1957. During graduate school he was a
Fulbright student in
Göttingen 1953–1954.
Career
Prizes and special recognition
*1964 Physics Prize of the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen
*1983 "Fellow" of the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
*1988 Alumni Citation, Brown University
*1990 Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen
*1991 Gold Heyrovsky Medal of the Czech Academy of Sciences
*1992 Hewlett-Packard Europhysics Prize for solid state physics
*1992 Max-Planck Prize of the Germany Research Society and the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
*1993 Member of the Germany Academy of Natural Scientists "Leopoldina" in Halle, Germany
*1996 Recipient of the first
MOLEC Conference Award
*1999 Honorary Fellow of the International Molecular Beams Symposium
*2000 Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
*2002 Stern-Gerlach Gold Medal of the German Physical Society
*2005
Kolos Medal of University of Warsaw
*2006
Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (with
Giacinto Scoles)
*2007 Honorary Doctorate in Science, Amherst College, MA, USA
*2013 Herschbach Award of the Dynamics of Molecular Collicions Conference Series
*2015 Gold Medal of the City of Toulouse, France
*2016 Gerhard Ertl Award Lecture, Fritz Haber Institute, Berlin
*2022 The
Enrico Fermi Prize
The Enrico Fermi Prize, first awarded in 2001, is given by the Italian Physical Society (Società Italiana di Fisica). It is a yearly award of €30,000 honoring one or more Members of the Society who have "particularly honoured physics with thei ...
of the Italian Physical Society (with
Giorgio Benedek
Giorgio Benedek (born 4 February 1941) is an Italian physicist, academic and researcher. He is an Emeritus Professor of Physics of Matter at University of Milano-Bicocca and Director of the International School of Solid State Physics at Ettore Maj ...
)
See also
*
Timeline of low-temperature technology
The following is a timeline of low-temperature technology and cryogenic technology (refrigeration down to –273.15 °C, –459.67 °F or 0 K). It also lists important milestones in thermometry, thermodynamics, statistical physics and ca ...
*
Holstein–Herring method The Holstein– Herring method, also called the surface Integral method, or Smirnov's method is an effective means of getting the exchange energy splittings of asymptotically degenerate energy states in molecular systems. Although the exchange energ ...
Monographs
* E. F. Greene and J. Peter Toennies: ''Chemische Reaktionen in Stoßwellen'', Dr. Dietrich Steinkopff Verlag, Darmstadt, 1959
* E. F. Greene and J. Peter Toennies: ''Chemical Reactions in Shock Waves'', Edward Arnold (Publishers) Ltd. London, 1964
* G. Benedek and J. Peter Toennies: ''Atomic Scale Dynamics at Surfaces: Theory and Experimental Studies with Helium Atom Scattering'', Springer, Heidelberg, 2018
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Toennies, Peter
Brown University alumni
Scientists from Philadelphia
Amherst College alumni
University of Bonn alumni
Academic staff of the University of Gothenburg
Living people
1930 births
American people of German descent
Founding members of the World Cultural Council
Lower Merion High School alumni
Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina