Peter Debye
Dutch-American physical chemist
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“Peter Debye.” thisDay, thisday.info/people/peter-debye/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2026.
Peter Debye. (n.d.). thisDay. Retrieved November 9, 2026, from https://thisday.info/people/peter-debye/
“Peter Debye.” thisDay. Accessed November 9, 2026. https://thisday.info/people/peter-debye/.
Who was Peter Debye?
Peter Joseph William Debye ( dib-EYE; born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije, Dutch: [ˈpeːtrʏz dəˈbɛiə]; March 24, 1884 – November 2, 1966) was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Born in Maastricht, Netherlands, Debye enrolled in the Aachen University of Technology in 1901. In 1911, when Albert Einstein took an appointment as a professor at Prague, Bohemia, Debye took his old professorship at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. At Aachen, he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye. In 1906, Sommerfeld received an appointment at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Bavaria, and took Debye with him as his assistant. Debye got his Ph.D. with a dissertation on radiation pressure in 1908.
Historical significance
In 1905, he completed his first degree in electrical engineering. He published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents, in 1907. In 1910, he derived the Planck radiation formula using a method which Max Planck agreed was simpler than his own.
Cite this page
“Peter Debye.” thisDay, thisday.info/people/peter-debye/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2026.
Peter Debye. (n.d.). thisDay. Retrieved November 9, 2026, from https://thisday.info/people/peter-debye/
“Peter Debye.” thisDay. Accessed November 9, 2026. https://thisday.info/people/peter-debye/.