Lars OnsagerBorn 27 Nov 1903; died 5 Oct 1976 at age 72.Norwegian-born American chemist whose development of a general theory of irreversible chemical processes gained him the 1968 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. These Onsager reciprocal relations have importance in a wide range of applications. Throughout his career, he studied the thermodynamics and kinetics of electrolytes. In 1944 he derived the exact solution of the two-dimensional Ising model, a model of a ferromagnet. This virtuosic mathematical feat led to a deeper understanding of phase transitions and critical points. From about 1940 Onsager investigated low-temperature physics. He suggested the quantization of vortices in liquid helium, and in 1952 extracted information about the distribution of electrons from the de Haas-van Alphen effect. |
