Joseph Edward Mayer

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Joseph Edward Mayer (born February 5, 1904 in New York City , † October 15, 1983 ) was an American chemist , known for fundamental contributions to statistical mechanics . He was a professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

Mayer was the son of an engineer who immigrated from Austria. From 1921 he studied chemistry at Caltech with Richard C. Tolman , Arthur Amos Noyes and Roscoe G. Dickinson, among others . Linus Pauling was one of his fellow students . After completing his bachelor's degree in 1924, he went to the University of California, Berkeley , where he received his doctorate in 1927 under Gilbert Newton Lewis ( A disproof of the radiation theory of chemical activation ). In 1929 he went to the University of Göttingen with James Franck on a Rockefeller scholarship . Here he came into contact with quantum mechanics, which was then emerging, worked with Max Born and met Maria Goeppert-Mayer , a student from Born , whom he married in 1930. From 1937 to 1939 he was a professor at Johns Hopkins University and from 1939 to 1945 at Columbia University . During World War II, he did research for the US Army's ballistics research laboratory in Aberdeen Proving Ground and was also on the front in Iwo Jima . In 1945 he went to the University of Chicago and in 1960 to the UCSD, where he headed the chemistry faculty from 1963 to 1966 and retired in 1972.

Mayer dealt with physical chemistry and was an expert in statistical mechanics. At first he worked experimentally, later only as a theoretician. In the 1930s he introduced diagrammatic methods and cluster developments (cluster expansions) of the distribution function for imperfect (real) gases into statistical mechanics. With WG McMillan he developed a theory of solutions, which he later extended to ionic solutions.

In 1958 he received the GN Lewis Medal, in 1967 the Peter Debye Award , in 1969 the James Flack Norris Award from the American Chemical Society, in 1966 the Chandler Medal from Columbia University and in 1967 the JG Kirkwood Medal from Yale University. In 1946 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences . In 1955 he was Gibbs Lecturer . From 1973 to 1974 he was President of the American Physical Society . He was an honorary doctor of the University of Brussels (1962) and from 1961 a member of the Scientific Council of the Solvay Foundation. In 1958 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1964 he was a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . In 1970 he was accepted into the American Philosophical Society .

From 1930 until her death in 1972 he was married to the Nobel laureate Maria Goeppert-Mayer , with whom he had two children and with whom he published a book on statistical mechanics in 1940. After the death of his first wife, he married Margaret ( Peg ) Griffen.

From 1941 to 1952 he was editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics.

Fonts

  • The way it was , Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, Volume 33, 1982, pp. 1-23 (autobiography)
  • with Maria Goeppert-Mayer Statistical Mechanics , Wiley 1940
  • The statistical mechanics of condensing systems , parts 1-6, J. Chem. Phys., Volume 5, 1937, pp. 67, 74 (with PG Ackermann), Volume 6, 1938, pp. 87, 101 (both with SF Harrison ), J. Phys. Chem., Vol. 43, 1939, p. 71, J. Chem. Phys. Volume 7, 1939, p. 1025 (with SF Streeter)
  • with Elliott W. Montroll Statistical mechanics of imperfect gases , J. Chem. Phys., Vol. 9, 1941, pp. 626-637
  • with WG McMillan Statistical mechanics of multicomponent systems , J. Chem. Phys., Volume 13, 1945, pp. 276-305
  • The theory of ionic solutions , J. Chem. Phys., Vol. 18, 1950, pp. 1426-1436

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A theory of chemical reactions involving infrared radiation was discussed at that time
  2. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Joseph E. Mayer. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed June 21, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Member History: Joseph E. Mayer. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 29, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Mayer, Joseph Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chemist
DATE OF BIRTH February 5, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH October 15, 1983