Peter Fulde (6 April 1936 – 11 April 2024) was a German physicist working in

condensed matter theory Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and electrons. More gene ...

and

quantum chemistry Quantum chemistry, also called molecular quantum mechanics, is a branch of physical chemistry focused on the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems, particularly towards the quantum-mechanical calculation of electronic contributions ...

Biography

Fulde received a PhD degree at the University of Maryland in 1963. After spending more than one year as a postdoc with Michael Tinkham in Berkeley, he returned in 1965 to Germany where he obtained a chair for theoretical physics in 1968 at the

Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Goethe University Frankfurt () is a public research university located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was founded in 1914 as a citizens' university, which means it was founded and funded by the wealthy and active liberal citizenry of Frankfurt ...

in Frankfurt/M. From 1971 to 1974 he was in charge of the theory group of the Institute Max von Laue-Paul Langevin in Garching. In 1971 he became a director at the

Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research The Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (German: ''Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung'') was founded in 1969 and is one of the 84 institutes of the Max Planck Society. It is located on a campus in Stuttgart, together with th ...

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 ...

where he served until 1993 when he became the founding director of the

Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems The Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex systems is one of the 80 institutes of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, located in Dresden, Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. I ...

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

. After his retirement in 2007 he became president of the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics and a faculty member at

POSTECH Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH, ) is a private university, private research university in Pohang, South Korea. History Pohang University of Science and Technology was established on December 3, 1986, by POSCO, a South Ko ...

Pohang Pohang (; ), formerly spelled Po-Hang, is the largest city in North Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, with a List of cities in South Korea, population of 499,363 as of 2022, bordering the Sea of Japan, East Sea to the east, Yeongcheon to the w ...

(Korea). He directed the center until 2013. Fulde has made numerous contributions to

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid State of matter, phases, that arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms and elec ...

including

superconductivity Superconductivity is a set of physical properties observed in superconductors: materials where Electrical resistance and conductance, electrical resistance vanishes and Magnetic field, magnetic fields are expelled from the material. Unlike an ord ...

and correlated electrons in molecules and solids. Particularly known is the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov (FFLO) phase which may occur when fermions with imbalanced populations are paired. Fulde was a founding member of the

Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Housed in three locations in and around Ber ...

(former Preussische Akadamie der Wissenschaften). He was a member of the

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (), in short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded on 1 January 1652, based on academic models in Italy, it was originally named the ''Academi ...

and Deutsche Akademie für Technikwissenschaften (acatech). Among his awards are the Order of Merit of the Free State of Saxony (2007), the Tsungming Tu Award of the National Science Council of Taiwan (2009) and the Marian-Smoluchowski-Emil-Warburg-Award of the German and Polish Physical Societies (2011). He was an Honorary Citizen of the Province Gyeongsangbuk do of the Republic of Korea (2014) and of the City of Pohang (2016). Fulde died in

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

on 11 April 2024, at the age of 88.

Selected publications

* * *P. Fulde “Crystal fields”, Chapter 17 in "Handbook on the physics and chemistry of rare-earth", ed. by K. A. Gschneider and L. Eyring; North-Holland Publ. Comp. (1978) *"Electron Correlations in Molecules and Solids", 480 pp. (Springer, Heidelberg 1991, 1993, 1995)
"Correlated Electrons in Quantum Matter"
535 pp. (World Scientific, Singapore, 2012); ebook ; pbk

Biography

Selected publications

References

See also