Jan Zaanen

Johannes " Jan" Zaanen ( born April 17, 1957 in Leiden) is a Dutch theoretical solid state physicist.

Zaanen graduated in 1982 with degree in chemistry at the University of Groningen, where he received his doctorate cum laude in 1986 with George A. Sawatzky in physics. As a post - graduate student he was in 1987 at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, where he was a scientific member in 1988. In 1990 he was a visiting scientist in the theory group of the ATT Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. 1993-1998 he was a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences ( KNAW ). In 1998 he was assistant professor ( Hoofd Docent ) at the University of Leiden where he since 2000 a full professorship in theoretical physics has and is at Lorentz Institute. 2004/2005 he was a visiting professor at Stanford University (as a Fulbright Scholar ) and 2010 from the Ecole Normale Superieure.

In his dissertation, and in collaboration with his supervisor Sawatzky, he developed a generalized Hubbard model of the band structure in transition metal compounds ( Zaanen - Sawatzky -Allen theory). Around 1990 he developed with other LDA U method, a density functional method for band structure calculations in Mott insulators.

In the late 1980s he suspected the formation of stripes in high-temperature superconductors, which were later confirmed experimentally. Regardless this was done by Victor Emery and Steven Kivelson. He examined the critical quantum state before the transition to the superconductor and turned it on and methods of string theory

In 2006 he was awarded the Spinoza Prize. Since 2008, the Fellow of the American Physical Society. Since 2005, he provides regular guest posts for the journal Nature.