Lars Onsager

Science / Scientist Datebook

Lars Onsager, Norwegian Chemist and Physicist

Credited for his discovery of the Onsager reciprocal relations, fundamental for the irreversible processes of thermodynamics.

Lars Onsager (November 27, 1903 – October 5, 1976) was a Norwegian-born American physical chemist and theoretical physicist, winner of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He held the Gibbs Professorship of Theoretical Chemistry at Yale University.

His research at Brown University was concerned mainly with the effects on diffusion of temperature gradients, and produced the Onsager reciprocal relations, a set of equations published in 1929. Two years later its form was expanded in statistical mechanics whose importance went unrecognized for many years. Their value became apparent during the decades following World War II. By 1968 they were considered important enough to gain him that year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.



On a personal note, in 1933, just before taking up the position at Yale, onsager traveled to Austria to visit electrochemist Hans Falkenhagen. He met Falkenhagen's sister-in-law, Margrethe Arledter. They were married on September 7, 1933, and had three sons and a daughter.

Legacy of Onsager

His contribution as a Nobel laureate in Chemistry:  His research work resulted in his explanation of the movement of ions in solution as related to turbulence and fluid densities. This had a major effect on the development of physical chemistry, described as "providing the fourth law of thermodynamics." For this he was awarded the 1968 Nobel Prize for Chemistry --- "for the discovery of the reciprocal relations bearing his name, the fundamental for the for the dynamics of irreversible processes."

The Norwegian Institute of Technology established the Lars Onsager Lecture and The Lars Onsager Professorship in 1993 to award outstanding scientists in the scientific fields of Lars Onsager; Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. In 1997 his sons and daughter donated his scientific works and professional belongings to NTNU (before 1996 NTH) in Trondheim, Norway as his Alma Mater.  Currently, these are organized as The Lars Onsager Archive at the Gunnerus Library in Trondheim.


Resource:

"Lars Onsager - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013. Web. 28 Nov 2013


Image Credit:

Lars Onsager,  Wikipedia Commons. Accessed Nov 27, 2013


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