Peter Debye

Peter Joseph William Debye (born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije, March 24, 1884, in Maastricht, Netherlands, died November 2, 1966, in Ithaca, New York) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist. He won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on molecular structure through studies of dipole moments and the diffraction of X-rays and electrons in gases. Debye extended Einstein's theory of specific heat into what became known as the Debye model, and with Erich Huckel developed the Debye-Huckel equation describing how ions behave in electrolyte solutions. He later worked at Cornell University, where he continued research into light scattering and polymer chemistry, and is remembered as one of the most versatile physical scientists of the twentieth century.