Knut W. Urban (born 25 June 1941) is a German physicist. He has been the Director of the Institute of Microstructure Research at

Forschungszentrum Jülich Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ; “Jülich Research Centre”) is a German national research institution that pursues interdisciplinary research in the fields of energy, information, and bioeconomy. It operates a broad range of research infrast ...

from 1987 to 2010. Knut Urban's research focuses on the field of

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing i ...

(both regarding the further development of instruments and the control software), the examination of structural defects in oxides and the physical properties of complex metallic alloys. He also works on

Josephson effect In physics, the Josephson effect is a phenomenon that occurs when two superconductors are placed in proximity, with some barrier or restriction between them. The effect is named after the British physicist Brian Josephson, who predicted in 1962 ...

s in

high-temperature superconductors High-temperature superconductivity (high-c or HTS) is superconductivity in materials with a critical temperature (the temperature below which the material behaves as a superconductor) above , the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. They are "high ...

and the application of these effects in

SQUID A squid (: squid) is a mollusc with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight cephalopod limb, arms, and two tentacles in the orders Myopsida, Oegopsida, and Bathyteuthida (though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also ...

systems and magnetometers as well as on the application of Hilbert transform spectroscopy in examining the excitation of solids, liquids and gases on the gigahertz and terahertz scale. Besides his activities at Forschungszentrum Jülich he was also professor for

experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and o ...

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), in German ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen'', is a German public research university located in Aachen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With more than 47,000 students enrolled in 144 study prog ...

before retirement. He is the laureate of the

Wolf Prize in Physics The Wolf Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes established by the Foundation and awarded since 1978; the others are in Agriculture, Chemistry, Mathematics, Medicine and Arts. The ...

and the 2020

Kavli Prize The Kavli Prize was established in 2005 as a joint venture of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation (United States), Kavli Foundation. It honors, supports, and r ...

in Nanonoscience for the development of aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy with Harald Rose and

Maximilian Haider Maximilian Haider (born 23 January 1950) is an Austrian physicist known for his contributions to electron microscopy. He obtained the 2011 Wolf Prize in Physics and the 2020 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience for the development of the aberration-corr ...

Biography

Knut Urban was born in

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; ; Swabian German, Swabian: ; Alemannic German, Alemannic: ; Italian language, Italian: ; ) is the capital city, capital and List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, largest city of the States of Germany, German state of ...

, Germany in 1941. Urban studied physics at the

University of Stuttgart The University of Stuttgart () is a research university located in Stuttgart, Germany. It was founded in 1829 and is organized into 10 faculties. It is one of the oldest technical universities in Germany with programs in civil, mechanical, ind ...

and was awarded a PhD in 1972 for his dissertation on the study of the damage caused by the electron beams in a high-voltage electron microscope at low temperatures. He subsequently conducted research at the Max Planck Institute of Metals Research in Stuttgart until 1986. Amongst other tasks, he was involved in the installation of a 1.2-MV high-voltage microscope laboratory as well as in studies on the anisotropy of atomic displacement energy in crystals and on radiation-induced diffusion. In 1986 he was appointed professor of general material properties by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the

University of Erlangen-Nuremberg A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

. In 1987 Urban was appointed to the chair of experimental physics at RWTH Aachen University and simultaneously became the director of the Institute of Microstructure Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich. From 1996 to 1997 he was a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Materials Processing of

Tohoku University is a public research university in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. It is colloquially referred to as or . Established in 1907 as the third of the Imperial Universities, after the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, it initially focused on sc ...

Sendai is the capital Cities of Japan, city of Miyagi Prefecture and the largest city in the Tōhoku region. , the city had a population of 1,098,335 in 539,698 households, making it the List of cities in Japan, twelfth most populated city in Japan. ...

(Japan). Knut Urban was appointed one of two directors of the Ernst Ruska Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) when it was founded in 2004 as a common competence platform of Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University as well as a national centre for users of high-resolution transmission electron microscopes. From 2004 to 2006 he was president of the

German Physical Society The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. As of 2022, the DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 52,220, making it one of the largest national physics societies in the world. The DPG's membership peaked ...

(DPG) which is the world's largest organisation of physicists. He is a member of several advisory bodies, boards of trustees and senate committees of scientific institutions. Knut Urban formally retired as the Director of the Institute of Microstructure Research and the Ernst Ruska Centre (ER-C) in Jülich in 2010 and was appointed a JARA senior professor at

in 2012. In 2009, he was elected a member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. Knut Urban is married and has three daughters.

Awards and honours

* 1986 Acta Metallurgica Award (best paper of the year 1984) * 1986 Carl Wagner Award, University of Göttingen * 1996 Research Award of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science * 1999 Heyn Medal of German Society for Materials Science (DGM) * 2000 Honorary Member Materials Research Society of India * 2000 Medal for Scientific Publishing of the German Physical Society (DPG) * 2006 Von-Hippel Award of the US

Materials Research Society The Materials Research Society (MRS) is a non-profit, professional organization for materials researchers, scientists and engineers. Established in 1973, MRS is a member-driven organization of approximately 13,000 materials researchers from academi ...

(MRS) * 2006 Honorary Member of US Materials Research Society (MRS) * 2006 Karl Heinz Beckurts-Award for Scientific and Technical Innovation * 2008 Honda Award for Ecotechnology (Honda Foundation, Japan) *2009 Appointment Member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany * 2009 Honorary Professor at

Xi'an Jiaotong University Xi'an Jiaotong University (XJTU; zh, p=, c=西安交通大学, labels=no) is a public university in Xi'an, Shaanxi, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 9 ...

, Xi'an, China * 2011

Wolf Prize The Wolf Prize is an international award granted in Israel, that has been presented most years since 1978 to living scientists and artists for "achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people ... irrespective of natio ...

in Physics * 2012 Honorary Member German Electron Microscopy Society * 2014

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards () are an international award programme recognizing significant contributions in the areas of scientific research and cultural creation. The categories that make up the Frontiers of Knowledge Awards ...

in Basic Sciences (BBVA Foundation, Madrid/Spain) *2015 Honorary Member German Physical Society *2015 Honorary Member Japanese Institute of Metals and Materials * 2015 NIMS Award (National Institute of Materials Science, Tsukuba, Japan) *2018 Doctor honoris causa, Tel Aviv University *2020 He has been awarded the

in neuroscience,(together with

and Harald Rose and Ondrej Krivanek).2020 Kavli Prize in Nanoscience
www.kavliprize.org. Retrieved 27 May 2020. *2020 Election as Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

References

External links

Knut Urban (CV)

Institute of Microstructure Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich
{{DEFAULTSORT:Urban, Knut 1941 births Living people 20th-century German physicists Scientists from Stuttgart Wolf Prize in Physics laureates Microscopists Kavli Prize laureates in Nanoscience 21st-century German physicists Presidents of the German Physical Society Academic staff of RWTH Aachen University Jülich Research Centre