Ludger Wöste (born May 2, 1946 in

Emsbüren Emsbüren is a municipality in the Emsland district, Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Ems, approx. 15 km south of Lingen, and 15 km northwest of Rheine. It has a railway station: Leschede. Personalities * Willi ...

) is a German physicist and professor at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

. He is known for research in laser control of chemistry and laser-based weather control through the creation of plasma channels by laser filamentation in air.

Education and career

Wöste studied physics and electrical engineering at the

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), also known as North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Technical University of Aachen, University of Aachen, or ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch ...

from 1965 and physics at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine U ...

from 1968 with a diploma from

Herbert Walther Herbert Walther (January 19, 1935 in Ludwigshafen/Rhein, Germany – July 22, 2006 in Munich) was a leader in the fields of quantum optics and laser physics. He was a founding director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garchin ...

in 1972 (deflection of a sodium atom beam in the radiation field of a dye laser) and from 1973 to 1978 as an assistant to Ernst Schumacher at the

University of Bern The University of Bern (german: Universität Bern, french: Université de Berne, la, Universitas Bernensis) is a university in the Switzerland, Swiss capital of Bern and was founded in 1834. It is regulated and financed by the Canton of Bern. It ...

, where he received his doctorate in 1978 (mass selective laser spectroscopy on metal atom clusters). As a postdoc he was with

Richard N. Zare Richard Neil Zare (born November 19, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio) is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Zare has made a considerable impact in physic ...

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

until 1980, where he worked on laser chemistry (reactions on optically oriented molecules) and then he was until 1987 project manager (photodynamic behavior of metal clusters) and lecturer at the

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

, and from 1981 as head of research for laser applications. In 1984, he was a visiting professor at the Aimé Cotton Laboratory of the University of Paris-Sud, where he studied the transition from non-conducting to conducting metal in mercury clusters. From 1989 he was a professor at the

and from 2007 to 2008 he was dean of the physics department. Since 2014 he has been Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Senior Professor for new teaching concepts in physics.

Research

Wöste's research focuses on the applications of laser spectroscopy and laser chemistry, including the aspects of

ultrafast spectroscopy In optics, an ultrashort pulse, also known as an ultrafast event, is an electromagnetic pulse whose time duration is of the order of a picosecond (10−12 second) or less. Such pulses have a broadband optical spectrum, and can be created by ...

, catalysis, clusters, optical remote sensing of the atmosphere, He's also known for developments in physics education - among other things he developed a construction kit for demonstration experiments at schools around mass spectrometry and the laser. In the 2000s, along with his former PhD student Jean-Pierre Wolf, Wöste and colleagues constructed the world's first mobile terawatt laser system, Teramobile. The goal of the project is to induce rainfall through intense laser-induced filamentation in air.

Honors and awards

Wöste received the Marian Smoluchowski and Emil Warburg Prize for Physics in 1999 and the Gay-Lussac-Humboldt Prize in 2006. In 2004, he was honorary professor at

Nanjing University Nanjing University (NJU; ) is a national public research university in Nanjing, Jiangsu. It is a member of C9 League and a Class A Double First Class University designated by the Chinese central government. NJU has two main campuses: the Xianl ...

. In 2007, he became a knight of the Ordre national du Mérite. Wöste holds honorary doctorates from the

West University of Timișoara The West University of Timișoara ( ro, Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara; abbreviated UVT) is a public higher education institution located in Timișoara. Classified by the Ministry of National Education as a university of education and sci ...

and the University of Lyon I. Wöste holds 13 patents and has over 320 scientific publications.

Bibliography

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woste, Ludger 1946 births Knights of the Ordre national du Mérite Academic staff of the Free University of Berlin 21st-century German physicists 20th-century German physicists RWTH Aachen University alumni University of Bern alumni Living people People from Emsland