Debye, Peter

orig. Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije

(born March 24, 1884, Maastricht, Neth.—died Nov. 2, 1966, Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.) Dutch-born U.S. physical chemist. His first important research, on electric dipole moments, advanced knowledge of the arrangement of atoms in molecules and of the distances between atoms. He showed that X-ray crystallography worked on powders, obviating the difficult first step of preparing good crystals. In 1923 he and Erich Hückel extended Svante Arrhenius's theory of the dissociation of salts in solution, proving that ionization is complete. He also investigated light scattering in gases. He won the Nobel Prize in 1936.

Debye, Peter (Joseph William) (b. Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debje) (1884–1966) physicist, chemist; born in Maastricht, Holland. He held a series of teaching posts at Swiss, Dutch, and German universities while he pursued his research in physical chemistry. In 1912–13 he introduced the concept of the molecular electric dipole moment, which led to new understandings of ionization and molecular structure. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry (1936). He emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1940 and headed the chemistry department at Cornell University (1940–50), where he concentrated on research in the light-scattering process.