Knut Urban

Knut Urban (born 25 June 1941 in Stuttgart ) is a German physicist. He was from 1987 to 2010 director of the Institute for Microstructure Research of the Research Center Jülich.

The focus of the research work of Knut Urban is in the range of aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy both with respect to instrumental developments as well as control software as well as in the investigation of structural defects in oxides and the physical properties of complex metallic alloys. There are also works on Josephson effects in high-temperature superconductors and their application for SQUID systems and magnetometers, as well as work on the application Hilbert transformationsspektroskopischer method for the investigation of Giga - and terahertz excitations in solids, liquids and gases.

Besides his work at the Research Center Jülich he had until his retirement held the chair of experimental physics at the Rheinisch -Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen.

Biography

Urban studied physics at the University of Stuttgart and received his doctorate in 1972 with a dissertation on the topic "Study of electron beam damage in a high voltage electron microscope at low temperatures ." Then he conducted research until 1986 at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research. There was, among others, with the construction of a 1.2 MV high voltage microscope laboratory as well as studies on the anisotropy of the atomic displacement energy in crystals and irradiation- induced diffusion is concerned. In 1986 he was appointed professor of general material properties at the Institute of Materials Science at the University of Erlangen -Nuremberg. Urban was appointed in 1987 to the chair of experimental physics at the Rheinisch- Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen and at the same time appointed Director of the Institute for Microstructure Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich. From 1996 to 1997 he worked as a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Materials Processing Tohoku University in Sendai (Japan). With the establishment of the Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER -C) as a common research platform of excellence Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen as a national user center in the field of high-resolution electron microscopy Urban was appointed in 2004 to one of the two directors of the Centre.

From 2004 to 2006 he was president of the German Physical Society ( DPG). He is a member of various advisory boards, boards of trustees and Senate committees of scientific institutions.

2009 Knut Urban was elected to the North Rhine- Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

In 2010, he went into retirement and was named JARA Senior Professor in early 2012 at the RWTH Aachen.

Knut Urban is married and has three daughters.

Awards and Honors

  • Acta Metallurgica - Award 1986
  • Carl Wagner Award, 1986
  • Research Award of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science, 1996
  • Heyn Medal of the German Society for Materials Science, 1999
  • Medal for Science Journalism of the German Physical Society, 2000
  • Honorary Member of the Materials Research Society of India, 2000
  • Visiting professor for life at Wuhan University (China ), 2001
  • Von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society, 2006
  • Karl Heinz Beckurts Award for Innovation, 2006
  • Honda Prize, 2008
  • Wolf Prize in Physics 2011
  • JARA Senior Professor, 2012
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