Wolfgang Götze (born 11 July 1937 – 20 October 2021) was a German theoretical physicist.
He began his physics education at
Humboldt University of Berlin
The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany.
The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...
and the
Free University of Berlin, after which he obtained his doctorate at the
Technical University of Munich in 1963. After temporary positions at the
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the
Steklov Institute of Mathematics
Steklov Institute of Mathematics or Steklov Mathematical Institute () is a premier research institute based in Moscow, specialized in mathematics, and a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The institute is named after Vladimir Andreevich Stek ...
, in 1970 Götze accepted a chair for theoretical physics at the Technical University of Munich. There he did research on various problems of condensed matter physics as well as fluid dynamics.
He is especially well known for his development of a
mode-coupling theory
that describes the microscopic dynamics of
viscous liquids. When the theory was introduced in the 1980s, it was originally supposed to describe the
glass transition
The glass–liquid transition, or glass transition, is the gradual and Reversible reaction, reversible transition in amorphous solid, amorphous materials (or in amorphous regions within Crystallinity, semicrystalline materials) from a hard and rel ...
. While it provides an incomplete description there, it soon became clear that the theory rather applies to liquids of moderate to low viscosity. In particular, it has been used to accurately model the behavior of
supercooled fluids, where the theory has been thoroughly confirmed by experiments and simulations.
After his retirement in 2004 he was nominated TUM Emeritus of Excellence. For his contributions to the theory of condensed matter, especially to mode-coupling theory, Götze received in 2006 the
Max Planck Medal
The Max Planck Medal is the highest award of the German Physical Society , the world's largest organization of physicists, for extraordinary achievements in theoretical physics. The prize has been awarded annually since 1929, with few exceptions ...
of the
Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. In addition, for this theory as well as his whole research work, he won in 2006 the
Tomassoni award.
Götze died on 20 October 2021 at the age of 84.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gotze, Wolfgang
1937 births
People from Fürstenwalde
Scientists from the Province of Brandenburg
20th-century German physicists
Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich
Winners of the Max Planck Medal
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni
2021 deaths