David Enskog

David Enskog ( born April 22, 1884 in Västra Ämtervik, Sunne Municipality, † June 1, 1947 in Stockholm) was a Swedish theoretical physicist who worked in statistical mechanics.

Enskog studied at Uppsala University, where he was awarded a degree in 1911 with Gustav Granqvist ( with an experimental work on gas diffusion) and 1917 Carl Wilhelm Oseen doctorate ( which he applied mathematical methods by David Hilbert in the kinetic theory of gases ). His main job was after graduating teachers. It was not until 1930 he was Professor of Mathematics and Mechanics at the Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, on the recommendation of Sydney Chapman, who was at that time just in Sweden ( Enskogs thesis had been previously evaluated in Sweden just as mediocre and found little resonance, so that he was adjusted before an academic career ).

Enskog worked since receiving his diploma on the Maxwell - Boltzmann distribution law in the kinetic theory of gases. He said in 1911 independently by Chapman a paradoxical after former view behavior of mixtures of two gases of different molecular size with a temperature imbalance ahead, but which has been experimentally confirmed (namely, that the gas with the larger molecules concentrated at lower temperature ). Application found this work later in the methods of uranium enrichment by gaseous diffusion in the Manhattan Project of World War II. In 1921 he extended the kinetic theory of Maxwell and Boltzmann on dense gases, in which collisions of more than two particles play a role. This was picked up by Chapman, who in the book " The mathematical theory of non uniform gases" represented the " Chapman - Enskog theory" with Thomas George Cowling 1939.

In 1941 he was elected Swedish Engineering Academy and 1947 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in the Royal.