Jan Peter Toennies (born 3 May 1930) is an American scientist and former director of the

Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization The Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany, is a research institute for investigations of complex non-equilibrium systems, particularly in physics and biology. Its founding history goes back to Ludwig Pran ...

Early life and education

He was born in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

to German immigrant parents. He is the grandson of sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies. He graduated from

Lower Merion High School Lower Merion High School is a public high school in Ardmore, a community in Philadelphia's Main Line suburbs. It is one of two high schools in the Lower Merion School District; the other one is Harriton High School. Lower Merion serves both Lo ...

, outside of Philadelphia in 1948, from Amherst College, with a B.A. in 1952, and from Brown University, with a Ph.D. in chemistry in 1957. During graduate school he was a

Fulbright student The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people o ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

1953–1954.

Career

Prizes and special recognition

*1964 Physics Prize of the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen *1983 "Fellow" of the American Physical Society *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 Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, ...

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 Giacinto Scoles (born 1935 in Torino, Italy) is a European and North American chemist and physicist who is best known for his pioneering development of molecular beam methods for the study of weak van der Waals forces between atoms, molecules, an ...

) *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)

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

* * * * {{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

Early life and education

Career

Prizes and special recognition

See also

Monographs

References