Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debye (1884-1966)

Awarded the Prize “for his contributions to our knowledge of molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments on the diffraction of X-rays electrons in gases.”

American physical chemist. Debye was born at Maastricht in the Netherls on March 24, 1884. He studied electrical engineering at Aachen gained his Ph.D. at Munich in 1908. He held chairs of physics at Zurich, Utrecht, Gottingen, Leipzig. He was Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Theoretical Physics (1935-40) before emigrating to America where he was Professor of Chemistry at Cornell (1940-50). Debye died on November 2, 1966 in Ithaca, New York.