Klaus Bechgaard

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Klaus Bechgaard (born March 5, 1945 in Copenhagen ; † March 7, 2017 there ) was a Danish chemist , known for the discovery of organic superconductors .

Life

Klaus Bechgaard studied chemistry at the University of Copenhagen with a candidate degree in 1969 and a licentiate in 1973. He was then a lecturer and from 1984 to 1993 professor for organic chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. From 1993 he headed the solid state physics and chemistry departments at Risø DTU and from 2001 the nanotechnology program and the polymer center. From 2004 he was again a professor in Copenhagen. He was also AJ Heeger Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2004 .

After the first organic compounds ( charge transfer salts, first TTF - TCNQ ) with metallic and semiconductor properties were discovered in the 1970s, Bechgaard and French colleagues ( Denis Jérome and others) synthesized the first organic superconductor (TMTSF) 2 PF in 1980 6 . They are examples of later so-called Bechgaard salts. They are quasi-one-dimensional conductors (later quasi-two-dimensional organic superconductors were also found). The discovery triggered intensive research and made Bechgaard one of the most cited scientists in the natural sciences at the time.

In 1984 he became a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences , 1983 of the Danish Academy of Sciences and 2002 of the Académie des Sciences . In 1981 he received the HN Prize, in 1997 the NKT Research Award, in 1991 the Hewlett Packard Europhysics Prize and in 2000 he was one of the recipients of the Descartes Prize . In 1983 he became a knight of the Palmes Académiques .

Fonts

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dødsannonce for Klaus Bechgaard. In: dodsannoncer.dk. March 9, 2017, accessed March 20, 2017 (Danish).
  2. ↑ Alan J. Heeger , Alan MacDiarmid , Hideki Shirakawa received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. They worked with doped polyacetylene .
  3. ↑ D. Jérome, A. Mazaud, M. Ribault, K. Bechgaard: Superconductivity in a synthetic organic conductor (TMTSF) 2 PF 6 . In: Journal de Physique Lettres . tape 41 , no. 4 , 1980, p. 95-98 , doi : 10.1051 / jphyslet: 0198000410409500 .
  4. ↑ Theoretical predictions for such organic superconductors were already made by William A. Little in the 1960s, but his hopes for superconductivity at room temperature (Little Superconductivity at room temperature , Scientific American February 1965) were not fulfilled with the organic superconductors found.
personal data
SURNAME Bechgaard, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish chemist
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen , Denmark
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 2017
Place of death Copenhagen , Denmark