Guenter Ahlers

Guenter Ahlers (born March 28, 1934 in Bremen ) is an American physicist who deals with chaos physics , low-temperature physics and phase transitions.

Ahlers studied chemistry at the University of California, Riverside (bachelor's degree in molecular orbital calculations in 1959), having previously spent two years researching in the cement industry, and received his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1963 with KS Pitzer and NE Phillips at the University of California, Berkeley (Some properties of solid hydrogen at small molar volumes). From 1963 to 1979 he was at Bell Laboratories . Since 1979 he has been Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). From 1989 to 1996 he was director of the Center for Nonlinear Sciences and the Quantum Institute and President of UCSB from 1989 to 1994.

Ahlers initially dealt with low-temperature physics, for example thermodynamic studies and the equation of state of solid hydrogen and helium. From 1967 he dealt with critical phenomena, for example the transition to superfluidity in helium-4, phase transitions in ferromagnets and anti-ferromagnets. From the 1970s he also dealt with non-linear phenomena (chaos physics) such as pattern formation and turbulence, especially in Rayleigh-Benard convection in liquid helium (from 1970).

In 1971 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . Since 1982 he has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2004). He was an advisor to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Center for Nonlinear Studies) and on the Advisory Committee for Microgravity Research at NASA . He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science .

In 2007 he received the American Physical Society's hydrodynamics award . In 1978 he received the Fritz London Memorial Award . In 1979 he was a Loeb Lecturer at Harvard. In 1989/90 he received the Alexander von Humboldt Senior US Scientist Award. In 1997/98 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was Otto von Guericke spokesperson at the University of Magdeburg (1997, structure formation in nature and in the laboratory), Fritz London Lecturer at Duke University and Kac Lecturer in Los Alamos.

Web links

• Biography at the APS
• Page of his research group in Santa Barbara
• Homepage
• Ahlers & year = 2007 Fluid Dynamics Prize of the APS