The

Fritz London Fritz Wolfgang London (March 7, 1900 – March 30, 1954) was a German physicist and professor at Duke University. His fundamental contributions to the theories of chemical bonding and of intermolecular forces (London dispersion forces) are today c ...

Memorial Lectures at

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

invites scientists who impinge at one or more points upon the various fields of physics and chemistry to which Fritz London contributed. The series is partially supported by an endowment fund established by

John Bardeen John Bardeen (; May 23, 1908 – January 30, 1991) was an American physicist and engineer. He is the only person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics twice: first in 1956 with William Shockley and Walter Brattain for the invention of the tran ...

"to perpetuate the memory of Fritz London, distinguished scientist and member of the Duke faculty from 1939 to the time of his death in 1954, and to promote research and understanding of Physics at Duke University and in the wider scientific community. "

List of lecturers

* 1956

Lothar Wolfgang Nordheim LotharHis name is sometimes misspelled as ''Lother''. Wolfgang Nordheim (November 7, 1899, Munich – October 5, 1985, La Jolla, California) was a German born Jewish American theoretical physicist. He was a pioneer in the applications of quantum ...

* 1957

James Franck James Franck (; 26 August 1882 – 21 May 1964) was a German physicist who won the 1925 Nobel Prize for Physics with Gustav Hertz "for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of an electron upon an atom". He completed his doctorate in ...

* 1958

Hendrik Casimir Hendrik Brugt Gerhard Casimir (15 July 1909 – 4 May 2000) was a Dutch physicist best known for his research on the two-fluid model of superconductors (together with C. J. Gorter) in 1934 and the Casimir effect (together with D. Polder) in 19 ...

* 1959

Felix Bloch Felix Bloch (23 October 1905 – 10 September 1983) was a Swiss-American physicist and Nobel physics laureate who worked mainly in the U.S. He and Edward Mills Purcell were awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize for Physics for "their development of ne ...

* 1960 Cornelis J. Gorter * 1962 Linus C. Pauling * 1963

Peter J.W. Debye Peter Joseph William Debye (; ; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, ...

* 1964

* 1965

William M. Fairbank William Martin Fairbank (24 February 1917 in Minneapolis – 30 September 1989 in Palo Alto) was an American physicist known in particular for his work on liquid helium. Career Fairbank was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and earned an AB from Wh ...

* 1966

Chen Ning Yang Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang (; born 1 October 1922), also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge the ...

* 1968

Walter Thirring Walter Thirring (29 April 1927 – 19 August 2014) was an Austrian physicist after whom the Thirring model in quantum field theory is named. He was the son of the physicist Hans Thirring.Thirring, H. Über die Wirkung rotierender ferner Massen ...

* 1969

Eugene P. Wigner Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner ( hu, Wigner Jenő Pál, ; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who also contributed to mathematical physics. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his con ...

* 1971

Lars Onsager Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903 – October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian-born American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Che ...

* 1972

Jesse Beams Jesse Wakefield Beams (December 25, 1898 in Belle Plaine, Kansas – July 23, 1977) was an American physicist at the University of Virginia. Biography Beams completed his undergraduate B.A. in physics at Fairmount College in 1921 and his mas ...

* 1973

David Pines David Pines (June 8, 1924 May 3, 2018) was the founding director of the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM) and the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (I2CAM) (respectively, United States-wide and international instit ...

* 1974

J. Robert Schrieffer John Robert Schrieffer (; May 31, 1931 – July 27, 2019) was an American physicist who, with John Bardeen and Leon Cooper, was a recipient of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physics for developing the BCS theory, the first successful quantum theo ...

* 1975

Michael Fisher Michael Ellis Fisher (3 September 1931 – 26 November 2021) was an English physicist, as well as chemist and mathematician, known for his many seminal contributions to statistical physics, including but not restricted to the theory of phase t ...

* 1976

Hans Bethe Hans Albrecht Bethe (; July 2, 1906 – March 6, 2005) was a German-American theoretical physicist who made major contributions to nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum electrodynamics, and solid-state physics, and who won the 1967 Nobel Prize ...

* 1977

Victor Weisskopf Victor Frederick "Viki" Weisskopf (also spelled Viktor; September 19, 1908 – April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. He did postdoctoral work with Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli, and Niels Boh ...

* 1978

Philip W. Anderson Philip Warren Anderson (December 13, 1923 – March 29, 2020) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate. Anderson made contributions to the theories of localization, antiferromagnetism, symmetry breaking (including a paper in 1 ...

* 1981

Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care fo ...

* 1982

Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...

* 1984 John C. Wheatley * 1984

John A. Wheeler John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911April 13, 2008) was an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in e ...

* 1985

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Pierre-Gilles de Gennes (; 24 October 1932 – 18 May 2007) was a French physicist and the Nobel Prize laureate in physics in 1991. Education and early life He was born in Paris, France, and was home-schooled to the age of 12. By the age of ...

* 1986 Richard N. Zare * 1987

Benjamin Widom Benjamin Widom (born 13 October 1927) is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. His research interests include physical chemistry and statistical mechanics. In 1998, Widom was awarded the Boltzmann Medal "for his illumi ...

* 1988 K. Alex Müller * 1989

William Klemperer William A. Klemperer (October 6, 1927 – November 5, 2017) was an American chemist who was one of the most influential chemical physicists and molecular spectroscopists in the second half of the 20th century. Klemperer is most widely known fo ...

* 1990

Freeman Dyson Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-American theoretical physicist and mathematician known for his works in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum m ...

* 1991

Rudolph Marcus Rudolph Arthur Marcus (born July 21, 1923) is a Canadian-born chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems". Marcus theory, named after him, provid ...

* 1992

Heinrich Rohrer Heinrich Rohrer (6 June 1933 – 16 May 2013) was a Swiss physicist who shared half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gerd Binnig for the design of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The other half of the Prize was awarded to Ernst R ...

* 1993 John C. Polanyi * 1994 * 1995

Walter Kohn Walter Kohn (; March 9, 1923 – April 19, 2016) was an Austrian-American theoretical physicist and theoretical chemist. He was awarded, with John Pople, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1998. The award recognized their contributions to the unde ...

* 1996

Russell J. Donnelly Russell James Donnelly (born 16 April 1930 in Hamilton, Ontario, died 13 June 2015 in Eugene, Oregon) was a Canadian-American physicist known for his work on classical and quantum fluid dynamics. He connected the fields of low temperature physic ...

* 1998 Robert C. Richardson * 1999

Ahmed H. Zewail Ahmed Hassan Zewail ( ar, أحمد حسن زويل, ; February 26, 1946 – August 2, 2016) was an Egyptian-American chemist, known as the "father of femtochemistry". He was awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on femtochemistry ...

* 2000

Wolfgang Ketterle Wolfgang Ketterle (; born 21 October 1957) is a German physicist and professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research has focused on experiments that trap and cool atoms to temperatures close to absolute zer ...

* 2001

Richard Smalley Richard Errett Smalley (June 6, 1943 – October 28, 2005) was an American chemist who was the Gene and Norman Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, Physics, and Astronomy at Rice University. In 1996, along with Robert Curl, also a professor of ch ...

* 2002 Harry Swinney * 2003 Harry B. Gray: Electron Tunneling Through Proteins * 2004

Myriam Sarachik Myriam Paula Sarachik (August 8, 1933October 7, 2021) was a Belgian-born American experimental physicist who specialized in low-temperature solid state physics. From 1996, she was a distinguished professor of physics at the City College of New ...

: Metal-Insulator Transitions * 2005

Charles M. Lieber Charles M. Lieber (born 1959) is an American chemist, a pioneer in nanoscience and nanotechnology. In 2011, Lieber was named the leading chemist in the world for the decade 2000–2010 by Thomson Reuters, based on the impact of his scientific ...

: Nanotechnology: Emerging Opportunities in Electronics, Biology and Much More! * 2006

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direct ...

: The Universe is a Strange Place * 2007

John Hopfield John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American scientist most widely known for his invention of an associative neural network in 1982. It is now more commonly known as the Hopfield network. Biography Hopfield was born in 1933 to Po ...

: How do we Think so Fast? From Neurons to Brain Computations * 2008 : Novel Ways of Studying Fluid Flows * 2009 William H. Miller: Quantum effects in the dynamics of complex molecular systems * 2010

Anthony James Leggett Sir Anthony James Leggett (born 26 March 1938) is a British-American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Leggett is widely recognised as a world leader in the theory of low-temperatur ...

: Does the everyday world really obey quantum mechanics? * 2011

Daan Frenkel Daan Frenkel One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 1948, Amsterdam) is a Dutch computational physicist in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. Education ...

:Van der Waals, Kamerlingh Onnes, and Phase Transitions: From Helium to Protein Crystal Nucleation * 2012

Mildred Dresselhaus Mildred Dresselhaus''Mildred Dresselhaus'' was elected in 1974

:The Wonders of Low-Dimensional Nanocarbons * 2013 Judith Klinman:Moving through Barriers: Unlocking the Mysteries of How Enzymes Really Work * 2014 David Weitz: Dripping, Jetting, Drops and Wetting: The Magic of Microfluidics * 2015 Mark A. Ratner: "By Indirections find Directions Out: Electronic Motion in Non-periodic Molecular Solids" * 2016

Sidney R. Nagel Sidney Robert Nagel is an American physicist and the Stein-Freiler Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, where he is affiliated with the Department of Physics, the James Franck Institute, and the Enrico Fermi Institute. His ...

"The Life and Death of a Drop"
* 2017 Emily A. Carter
"Quantum mechanical solutions for our energy future"
* 2018

Charles L. Kane Charles L. Kane (Charles Lewis Kane; born January 12, 1963) is a theoretical physics, theoretical condensed matter physics, condensed matter physicist and is the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylv ...

"Topological Phases of Matter"
* 2019 Josef Michl
"Porphene - a Heterocyclic Analog of Graphene"

References

{{Reflist

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...