peter debye

English - English

Definition of peter debye in English English dictionary

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

Hyphenation

pe·ter De·bye