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Lars Onsager papers [microform], Lars Onsager papers, Henry Margenau papers, Oral history interview with Morrel H. Cohen, March 31 and June 5.
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His later and probably more significant work involved non-reversible systems —systems in which differences in pressure, temperature, or some other factor are an important consideration. Onsager's early education was somewhat unorthodox as he was taught by private tutors, by his own mother, and at a somewhat unsatisfactory rural private school.
Eventually he entered the Frogner School in Oslo and did so well that he skipped a grade and graduated a year early. Overall, his early schooling provided him with a broad liberal education in philosophy, literature, and the arts. He is said to have become particularly fond of Norwegian epics and continued to read and recite them to friends and family throughout his life.
In , Onsager entered the Norges Tekniski Hoslashgskole in Trondheim where he planned to major in chemical engineering. The fact that he enrolled in a technical high school suggests that he was originally interested in practical rather than theoretical studies. Onsager had not pursued his schooling very long, however, before it became apparent that he wanted to go beyond the everyday applications of science to the theoretical background on which those applications are based.
Even as a freshman in high school, he told of making a careful study of the chemical journals, in order to gain background knowledge of chemical theory. One of the topics that caught his attention concerned the chemistry of solutions. In , Svante Arrhenius had proposed a theory of ionic dissociation that explained a number of observations about the conductivity of solutions and, eventually, a number of other solution phenomena.
Over the next half century, chemists worked on refining and extending the Arrhenius theory. The next great step forward in that search occurred in , when Onsager was still a student at the Tekniski Hoslashgskole. After much experimentation, Arrhenius had observed that dissociation was not complete in all instances.
They explained the apparent incomplete level of dissociation on the basis of the interactions among ions of opposite charges and water molecules in a solution. Almost perfectly, but not quite, as Onsager soon observed.
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By , Onsager had discovered the reason for this discrepancy. Onsager simply extended that principle to all of the ions in the solution. Onsager had the opportunity in to present his views to Debye in person. Having arrived in Zurich after traveling through Denmark and Germany with one of his professors, Onsager is reported to have marched into Debye's office in Zurich and declared, "Professor Debye, your theory of electrolytes is incorrect.
In , Onsager emigrated to the United States where he became an associate in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. The appointment proved to be disastrous: he was assigned to teach the introductory chemistry classes, a task for which he was completely unsuited. One of his associates, Robert H. Cole, is quoted in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society : "I won't say he was the world's worst lecturer, but he was certainly in contention.
Fortunately, a position was open at Brown University , and Onsager was asked by chemistry department chairman Charles A. Krauss to fill that position. During his 5-year tenure at Brown, Onsager was given a more appropriate teaching assignment, statistical mechanics. His pedagogical techniques apparently did not improve to any great extent, however; he still presented a challenge to students by speaking to the blackboard on topics that were well beyond the comprehension of many in the room.
A far more important feature of the Brown years was the theoretical research that Onsager carried out in the privacy of his own office. In this research, Onsager attempted to generalize his earlier research on the motion of ions in solution when exposed to an electrical field. In order to do so, he went back to some fundamental laws of thermodynamics, including Hermann Helmholtz's "principle of least dissipation.
Onsager first published the law in , but continued to work on it for a number of years. In , he announced a more general form of the law that applied to other non-equilibrium situations in which differences in electrical or magnetic force, temperature, pressure, or some other factor exists.
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The Onsager formulation was so elegant and so general that some scientists now refer to it as the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics. The Law of Reciprocal Relations was eventually recognized as an enormous advance in theoretical chemistry, earning Onsager the Nobel Prize in However, its initial announcement provoked almost no response from his colleagues.
It is not that they disputed his findings, Onsager said many years later, but just that they totally ignored them. Indeed, Onsager's research had almost no impact on chemists until after World War II had ended, more than a decade after the research was originally published. The year was a momentous one for Onsager.
It began badly when Brown ended his appointment because of financial pressures brought about by the Great Depression. His situation improved later in the year, however, when he was offered an appointment as Sterling and Gibbs Fellow at Yale. The appointment marked the beginning of an affiliation with Yale that was to continue until Prior to assuming his new job at Yale, Onsager spent the summer in Europe.
While there, he met the future Mrs. Onsager, Margarethe Arledter, the sister of the Austrian electrochemist H. The two apparently fell instantly in love, became engaged a week after meeting, and were married on September 7, Onsager had no sooner assumed his post at Yale when a small problem arose: the fellowship he had been awarded was for postdoctoral studies, but Onsager had not as yet been granted a Ph.
He had submitted an outline of his research on reciprocal relations to his alma mater , the Norges Tekniski Hoslashgskole, but the faculty there had decided that, being incomplete, it was not worthy of a doctorate. As a result, Onsager's first task at Yale was to complete a doctoral thesis. For this thesis, he submitted to the chemistry faculty a research paper on an esoteric mathematical topic.
Since the thesis was outside the experience of anyone in the chemistry or physics departments, Onsager's degree was nearly awarded by the mathematics department, whose chair understood Onsager's findings quite clearly. Only at the last moment did the chemistry department relent and agree to accept the judgment of its colleagues, awarding Onsager his Ph.
Onsager continued to teach statistical mechanics at Yale, although with as little success as ever. Instead of being called "Sadistical Mechanics," as it had been by Brown students, it was now referred to as "Advanced Norwegian" by their Yale counterparts. As always, it was Onsager's theoretical—and usually independent—research that justified his Yale salary.
In his nearly four decades there, he attacked one new problem after another, usually with astounding success. Though his output was by no means prodigious, the quality and thoroughness of his research was impeccable. During the late s, Onsager worked on another of Debye's ideas, the dipole theory of dielectrics. That theory had, in general, been very successful, but could not explain the special case of liquids with high dielectric constants.
By , Onsager had developed a new model of dipoles that could be used to modify Debye's theory and provide accurate predictions for all cases. Onsager was apparently deeply hurt when Debye rejected his paper explaining this model for publication in the Physikalische Zeitschrift, which Debye edited. It would be more than a decade before the great Dutch chemist, then an American citizen, could accept Onsager's modifications of his ideas.
In the s, Onsager turned his attention to the very complex issue of phase transitions in solids. He wanted to find out if the mathematical techniques of statistical mechanics could be used to derive the thermodynamic properties of such events. Although some initial progress had been made in this area, resulting in a theory known as the Ising model, Onsager produced a spectacular breakthrough on the problem.
He introduced a "trick or two" to use his words that had not yet occurred to and were probably unknown to his colleagues—the use of elegant mathematical techniques of elliptical functions and quaternion algebra. His solution to this problem was widely acclaimed. Though his status as a non-U.
Onsager lars biography of william hamilton: Lars Onsager (November 27, – October 5, ) [1] was a Norwegian American physical chemist and theoretical physicist. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in [3][4][5] Lars Onsager was born in Kristiania (now Oslo), Norway. His father was a lawyer.
Onsager and his wife finally did become citizens as the war drew to a close in The postwar years saw no diminution of Onsager's energy. He continued his research on low-temperature physics and devised a theoretical explanation for the superfluidity of helium II liquid helium. The idea, originally proposed in , was arrived at independently two years later by Princeton University 's Richard Feynman.
Onsager also worked out original theories for the statistical properties of liquid crystals and for the electrical properties of ice. In he was given a Fulbright scholarship to work at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge; there, he perfected his theory of diamagnetism in metals. During his last years at Yale, Onsager continued to receive numerous accolades for his newly appreciated discoveries.
He was awarded honorary doctorates by such noble universities as Harvard , Brown , Chicago , Cambridge , and Oxford , among others. He was inducted to the National Academy of Sciences in Upon reaching retirement age in , Onsager was offered the title of emeritus professor, but without an office. Disappointed by this apparent slight, Onsager decided instead to accept an appointment as Distinguished University Professor at the University of Miami's Center for Theoretical Studies.
At Miami, Onsager found two new subjects to interest him, biophysics and radiation chemistry. In neither field did he have an opportunity to make any significant contributions, however, as he died on October 5, , apparently the victim of a heart attack. Given his shortcomings as a teacher, Onsager still seems to have been universally admired and liked as a person.
Though modest and self-effacing, he possessed a wry sense of humor. In Biographical Memoirs, he is quoted as saying of research, "There's a time to soar like an eagle, and a time to burrow like a worm.
He had a liberal early education that was a combination of private school and his mother's tutoring, followed by high school in Oslo. The combination gave him an extraordinary background in literature and fine arts. Onsager then entered the Norwegian Institute of Technology as a student in chemical engineering. However, in his first year at the institute he became interested in the theory of electrolyte solutions, an interest that was the beginning of a scientific curiosity and ultimately led to his receiving a Nobel Prize.
Onsager soon mastered the new theory, and detected a flaw in it. His ideas and conclusions were ahead of their time, and recognition came to him only in the s. In , Onsager was awarded the Nobel Prize "for the discovery of the reciprocal relations in irreversible processes, named after him, which are of fundamental importance for the thermodynamics of irreversible processes.
Until , he remained a professor of theoretical chemistry at Yale University, and then he was elected an honorary professor at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where he worked at the Center for Theoretical Studies and Programs in Neuroscience. Onsager had an interest in literature and history and translated several ancient Scandinavian sagas into English.
He was known for his rare friendliness, always smiling and joking, which energized his students and colleagues. He never spoke ill of anyone and was impossible to argue with because he never objected. In his later years, Onsager suffered from thrombophlebitis and passed away on October 5, , in Coral Gables, Florida. Date of Birth: Contact About Privacy.
Ellen Swallow Richards. Ahmed Zewail. In , when the Great Depression limited Brown's ability to support a faculty member who was only useful as a researcher and not a teacher, he was let go by Brown, being hired after a trip to Europe by Yale University, where he remained for most of the rest of his life, retiring in His work at Brown was mainly concerned with the effects on diffusion of temperature gradients, and produced the Onsager reciprocal relations , a set of equations published in and, in an expanded form, in , in statistical mechanics whose importance went unrecognized for many years.
However, their value became apparent in the decades following World War II, and by they were considered important enough to gain Onsager that year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
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In , just before taking up the position at Yale, Onsager traveled to Austria to visit electrochemist Hans Falkenhagen. He met Falkenhagen's sister-in-law, Margrethe Arledter. They were married on September 7, , and had three sons and a daughter. At Yale, an embarrassing situation occurred: he had been hired as a postdoctoral fellow, but it was discovered that he had never received a Ph.
While he had submitted an outline of his work in reciprocal relations to the Norwegian Institute of Technology, they had decided it was too incomplete to qualify as a doctoral dissertation. He was told that he could submit one of his published papers to the Yale faculty as a dissertation, but insisted on doing a new research project instead.
His dissertation, entitled, "Solutions of the Mathieu equation of period 4 pi and certain related functions", was beyond the comprehension of the chemistry and physics faculty, and only when some members of the mathematics department, including the chairman, insisted that the work was good enough that they would grant the doctorate if the chemistry department would not, was he granted a Ph.
Even before the dissertation was finished, he was appointed assistant professor in , and promoted to associate professor in He quickly showed at Yale the same traits he had at JHU and Brown: he produced brilliant theoretical research, but was incapable of giving a lecture at a level that a student even a graduate student could comprehend.
He was also unable to direct the research of graduate students, except for the occasional outstanding one. In the late s, Onsager turned his work direction to the dipole theory of dielectrics, making improvements in another area that had been studied by Peter Debye. However, when he submitted his paper to a journal that Debye edited in , it was rejected; Debye would not accept Onsager's ideas until after World War II.