Lars
Onsager was born in Oslo, Norway, November 27, 1903 to parents Erling Onsager,
Barrister of the Supreme Court of Norway, and Ingrid, née Kirkeby. In
1933 he married Margarethe Arledter, daughter of a well-known pioneer in the
art of paper making, in Cologne, Germany. They have sons Erling Frederick, Hans
Tanberg, and Christian Carl, and a daughter Inger Marie, married to Kenneth
Roy Oldham.
After three years with the experienced educators Inga and Anna Platou in Oslo,
one year at a deteriorating private school in the country and a few months of
his mother's tutoring, he entered Frogner School as the family returned to Oslo.
There he was soon invited to jump a grade, so that he was able to graduate in
1920.
Admitted to Norges tekniske høgskole in the fall of that year as a student
of chemical engineering, he entered a stimulating environment; the department
had attracted outstanding students over a period of years. Among the professors
particularly O.E. Collenberg and J.P. Holtsmark encouraged his efforts in theory
and helped him in the evaluation of background knowledge.
After graduation in 1925 he accompanied Holtsmark on a trip to Denmark and Germany,
then proceeded to Zurich, where he remained for a couple of months with Debye
and Hückel and returned the following spring, for a stay of nearly two
years. There he organized his results in the theory of electrolytes for publication,
broadened his knowledge of physics and became acquainted with a good many leading
physicists.
In 1928 he went to Baltimore and served for the spring term as Associate in
Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. The appointment was not renewed; but
C.A. Kraus at Brown University engaged him as an instructor, and he remained
in that position for five years. During this time he gave lectures on statistical
mechanics, published the reciprocal relations and made progress on a variety
of problems. Some of the results were published at the time, one with the able
assistance of R.M. Fuoss; others formed the basis for later publications. In
1933 he accepted a Sterling Fellowship at Yale University, where he remained
to serve as Assistant Professor 1934-1940, Associate Professor 1940-1945 and
JosiahWillard Gibbs Professor of Theoretical Chemistry 1945-1972. Incidentally,
he obtained a Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Yale in 1935; his dissertation
consisted of the mathematical background for his interpretation of deviations
from Ohm's law in weak electrolytes.
Over the years, the subjects of his interest came to include colloids, dielectrics,
order-disorder transitions, metals and superfluids, hydrodynamics and fractionation
theory. In 1951-1952 he spent a year's leave of absence as a Fulbright Scholar
with David Schoenberg at the Mond Laboratory in Cambridge, England, a leading
center for research in low temperature physics. In the Spring of 1961 he served
as Visiting Professor of Physics at the University of California in San Diego.
Of his sabbatical leave 1967-1968 he spent the first three months as Visiting
Professor at Rockefeller University and the last three as Gauss Professor in
Göttingen. In 1962, at the suggestion of Manfred Eigen, he joined Neuroscience
Associates, a small interdisciplinary group organized by F.O. Schmitt in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Lars Onsager holds honary degrees of Doctor of Science from Harvard University
(1954), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (1962), Brown University (1962), Rheinisch-Westfahlische
Technische Hochschule (1962), the University of Chicago (1968), Ohio State University
(Cleveland, 1969), Cambridge University (1970) and Oxford University (1971),
and Doctor technicae from Norges tekniske høgskole (1960).
In 1953 he received the Rumford Medal from the American Academy of Arts and
Sciences, in 1958 The Lorentz Medal from The Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences,
in 1966 the Belfer Award in Science from Yeshiva University, in 1965 the Peter
Debye Award in Physical Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, in 1962
the Lewis Medal from its California Section, the Kirkwood Medal from the New
Haven Section and the Gibbs Medal from the Chicago Section, in 1964 the Richards
Medal from the Northeastern Section.
In 1969 he received the National Science Medal, and he became an honorary member
of The Bunsen Society for Physical Chemistry. During Spring 1970 he was Lorentz
Professor in Leiden (The Netherlands).
Onsager is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and The New York Academy
of Sciences, a member of The American Chemical Society, The Connecticut Academy
of Arts and Sciences, The National Academy of Sciences, The American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and The American Philosophical Society, a Foreign Member
of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, The Royal Norwegian Academy of Sciences,
The Norwegian Academy of Technical Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
and The Royal Science Society in Uppsala, and an Honorary Member of The Norwegian
Chemical Society.
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1963-1970, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Lars Onsager died on October 5, 1976.