Jan Beenakker

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JJM Beenakker

Jan Beenakker also: Joannes Joseph Maria Beenakker (born February 1, 1926 in Koog aan de Zaan , † July 23, 1998 in Leiden ) was a Dutch physicist.

Life

Beenakker was the son of a railroad worker and grew up in Zeeland and Rotterdam . He graduated from high school in 1942, but was only able to start studying physics at the University of Leiden in 1945 because of the Second World War . In 1951, after serving in the military in the meantime, he received his diploma as a meteorologist and in 1954 he received his doctorate under Cor Gorter and Krijn Taconis from the Kamerlingh-Onnes Laboratory in Leiden. His dissertation was on the influence of the helium-3 isotope on superconductivity. Beenakker stayed in Leiden, where he was a lecturer in 1959 and a full professor of experimental physics in 1963. From 1985 until his retirement in 1991 he was Rector Magnificus of the university .

1969/70 he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (sabbatical year) and 1961/62 visiting professor at the Catholic University of Leuven.

He dealt with the thermodynamic and transport properties of liquids and gases. The Senftleben-Beenakker effects are named after him and Hermann Senftleben (1890–1975), the influence of electrical and magnetic fields on the transport properties (thermal conductivity, viscosity) of molecular gases. It is vaguely similar to the Hall effect in solids. Older experiments by Senftleben believed that this only affected paramagnetic molecules such as nitrogen oxide and oxygen, but Beenakker and his colleague Hein Knaap showed that diamagnetic gases such as nitrogen and methane are also influenced by external fields (but they should have a non-spherical shape have), as the precession rate between two collisions of the molecules is changed by them.

Later he investigated transport in very dilute gases, in which boundary layer phenomena play a role and new phenomena emerge (viscomagnetic heat flow, thermomagnetic pressure difference). He and his colleagues were the first to observe the non-equilibrium velocity distribution in a heat-conducting gas.

He was chairman of the Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie (FOM), a Dutch research foundation for basic research, and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences . He was an honorary doctor of the University of Waterloo, was knight of the Order of the Dutch Lion and officer of the Belgian Order of the Crown .

Beenakker was married to Elena AA Manaresi (born January 21, 1927 in Bologna, † February 21, 2009 in Leiden). The sons Carlo Beenakker , Jan Willem Beenakker (born January 4, 1967 in Leiden; † January 23, 1967 ibid.) And Peter Beenakker (born April 23, 1962 in Leiden; † July 2, 2020 in Katwijk) come from the marriage .

Works (selection)

  • De invloed van het heliumisotoop met massa 3 op de eigenschappen van vloeibaar helium II. Leiden 1954
  • The intermoleculaire crashed into the alleyways. Leiden 1960
  • Communicatie in de natuurkunde. Leiden 1963
  • Alleys with reddened molecules. Leiden 1988
  • Geleerden en hun empty. Leiden 1991
  • Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Polyatomic Gases. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991 (with Fred McCourt, Walter Köhler, Ivan Kuscer)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Beenakker, Jan
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beenakker, Joannes Joseph Maria
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch physicist
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Koog aan de Zaan
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1998
Place of death Suffer