John P. Maier

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John Paul Maier (* 1947 ) is a British physical chemist and professor at the University of Basel .

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Maier studied chemistry at Nottingham University with a bachelor's degree in 1969 and received his doctorate in physical chemistry in 1972 with David W. Turner at Oxford University (Balliol College). From 1973 he was at the University of Basel, from 1978 as a private lecturer, from 1982 as associate professor and from 1992 as professor for physical chemistry.

Among other things, he dealt with the spectroscopy of molecules in noble gas matrices and the spectroscopic investigation and cooling of larger molecules in ion traps . His group investigates carbon compounds in the form of radicals and ions, especially those known from astrophysics (interstellar matter). He combines techniques from laser spectroscopy, mass spectrometry and ion traps. In 1993 Maier was able to prove a conjecture that some peculiarities of the spectra of diffuse interstellar bands (diffuse interstellar bands, DIB, first discovered in 1919/20 by Mary Heger at the Lick Observatory) can be traced back to simply ionized fullerenes and that these are therefore often in the interstellar Space. In the mid-1980s, the discoverers of the fullerenes had only examined the non-ionized forms of fullerenes spectroscopically and found no agreement. Harry Kroto then suspected in 1987 that one simply had to investigate ionized fullerenes, which Maier achieved by cooling the hot ionized fullerenes in an ion trap and thus creating interstellar conditions.

He received the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society in 1979, the Chemistry Prize of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in 1986 , the Marlow Medal of the British Chemical Society in 1980 and the Swiss Research Society's national Latsis Prize in 1987. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1999 and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2015 . In 2010 he received an ERC Advanced Grant and a Humboldt Research Award . In 2016 he received the Wheland Medal from the University of Chicago.

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  1. ↑ APS Fellow Archive. Retrieved February 9, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Maier, John P.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maier, John Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British physical chemist
DATE OF BIRTH 1947