Jan Peter Toennies

Jan Peter Toennies ( May 3, 1930 in Philadelphia ) is a German - American physicist and chemist, director of the Max Planck Institute for Flow Research in Göttingen was.

Toennies is the son of German immigrants and grew up in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania on. He studied at Amherst College ( BA 1952) and Brown University, where he received his doctorate in chemistry in 1957. 1953/54, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Göttingen and a post-doc from 1957 with a grant from the DFG with Wolfgang Paul, University of Bonn, his research assistant, he was. In 1965 he qualified as a professor there and became private. From 1965 to 1974 he was also a visiting professor of physical chemistry at the University of Gothenburg.

From 1969 he was in Göttingen, its orientation towards molecular physics he commenced in 1969 and was its director until 1998 at the Max Planck Institute for Flow Research. Thereafter, however, he forwarded the experimental molecular beam group as managing director until 2004. During this time, the Institute was reorganized on nonlinear dynamics and is now called the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization. From 1971 he was also a professor in Göttingen ( and honorary professor in Bonn).

Toennies focused on molecular and solid state physics, for example, molecular beam experiments, scattering from solid surfaces, expansion experiments with liquid helium, investigation of clusters of molecules (including Diffraktionsexperimenten ) and nanodroplets. Among other things, his group was able to demonstrate superfluidity in hydrogen clusters.

He is a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, the Physics Prize he received in 1964 since 1990. In 1992 he received the Max Planck Research Award with Giorgio Benedek. Since 1993 he is a member of the Leopoldina. In 2002 he received the Stern-Gerlach Medal and 2006, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics. He is an honorary doctor of Amherst College and the University of Gothenburg.

Toennies has been married since 1966 and has two daughters.