Peter Debye
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Petrus (Peter) Josephus Wilhelmus Debye
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1936
Born: 24 March 1884, Maastricht, the Netherlands
Died: 2 November 1966, Ithaca, NY, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Berlin University, Berlin, Germany; Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut (now Max-Planck-Institut) für Physik, Berlin, Germany
Prize motivation: “for his contributions to our knowledge of molecular structure through his investigations on dipole moments and on the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases”
Prize share: 1/1
Work
One of chemistry’s most important missions is to discern what molecules look like—how molecules are arranged in a structure. A method Peter Debye developed in 1912 to determine how electrical charges are distributed in a molecule became important in the mapping of molecular structures. At the same time, X-ray radiation was becoming an important tool for mapping crystalline structures, but Debye also developed methods for using both X-rays and electron beams to map molecular structures in gases, for example.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
