Ludger Wöste

Ludger Wöste (born May 2, 1946 in Emsbüren ) is a German physicist and university professor at the Free University of Berlin .

Wöste studied physics and electrical engineering at RWTH Aachen University from 1965 and physics at the University of Bonn from 1968 with a diploma under Herbert Walther in 1972 ( deflection of a sodium atom beam in the radiation field of a dye laser ) and from 1973 to 1978 assistant to E. Schumacher at the University of Bern , where he received his doctorate in 1978 ( mass selective laser spectroscopy on metal atom clusters ). As a post-doctoral student he was with Richard N. Zare at Stanford University until 1980 , where he dealt with laser chemistry (reactions on optically oriented molecules) and then until 1987 he was project manager (photodynamic behavior of metal clusters) and lecturer at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne , from 1981 as head of research for laser applications. In 1984 he was visiting professor at the Laboratoire Aimé Cotton at the University of Paris-South, where he dealt with the transition from non-conductor to conductive metal in mercury clusters. From 1989 he was professor at the Free University of Berlin and from 2007 to 2008 dean of the physics department. Since 2014 he has been Wilhelm and Else Heraeus senior professor for new teaching concepts in physics.

He deals with applications of laser spectroscopy and laser chemistry (ultra-fast spectroscopy, catalysis, clusters, optical remote sensing of the atmosphere) and also with physics education - among other things, he developed a construction kit for demonstration experiments in schools around mass spectrometry and the laser (including a Paul Trap ).

In 2006 he received the Gay Lussac Humboldt Prize and in 1999 the Marian Smoluchowski Emil Warburg Physics Prize . In 2004 he was an honorary professor at Nanjing University. In 2007 he became a Knight of the Ordre national du Mérite .

He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Timisoara and the University of Lyon I. Wöste holds 13 patents and he has produced over 320 scientific publications.

Wöste is married and has three children.

Fonts

• Editor with Oliver Kühn: Analysis and control of ultrafast photoinduced reactions, Springer 2007
• Editor with Jörn Manz: Femtosecond chemistry, 2 volumes, VCH 1995

Web links

• Website at the Free University of Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ^ French Embassy Berlin, award for Wöste by the director of the CNRS Catherine Bréchignac in the embassy, ​​November 22, 2007