Brownian motion, or pedesis, is the random motion of particles suspended in a medium.
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of knowledge of physics. The society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the prestigious Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than twenty science meetings each year. APS is a member society of the American Institute of Physics. Since January 2021 the organization has been led by chief executive officer Jonathan Bagger.
In the philosophy of thermal and statistical physics, the Brownian ratchet or Feynman–Smoluchowski ratchet is an apparent perpetual motion machine of the second kind, first analysed in 1912 as a thought experiment by Polish physicist Marian Smoluchowski. It was popularised by American Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman in a physics lecture at the California Institute of Technology on May 11, 1962, during his Messenger Lectures series The Character of Physical Law in Cornell University in 1964 and in his text The Feynman Lectures on Physics as an illustration of the laws of thermodynamics. The simple machine, consisting of a tiny paddle wheel and a ratchet, appears to be an example of a Maxwell's demon, able to extract mechanical work from random fluctuations (heat) in a system at thermal equilibrium, in violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Detailed analysis by Feynman and others showed why it cannot actually do this.
Marian Smoluchowski was a Polish physicist who worked in the Polish territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a pioneer of statistical physics, and an avid mountaineer.
In physics, the Einstein relation is a previously unexpected connection revealed independently by William Sutherland in 1904, Albert Einstein in 1905, and by Marian Smoluchowski in 1906 in their works on Brownian motion. The more general form of the equation is
In statistical physics, the Smoluchowski coagulation equation is a population balance equation introduced by Marian Smoluchowski in a seminal 1916 publication, describing the time evolution of the number density of particles as they coagulate to size x at time t.
The convection–diffusion equation is a combination of the diffusion and convection (advection) equations, and describes physical phenomena where particles, energy, or other physical quantities are transferred inside a physical system due to two processes: diffusion and convection. Depending on context, the same equation can be called the advection–diffusion equation, drift–diffusion equation, or (generic) scalar transport equation.
Jan Rzewuski was a Polish theoretical physicist, a member of Polish resistance during World War II and a participant in the Warsaw Uprising.
Peter Hänggi is a theoretical physicist from Switzerland, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Augsburg. He is best known for his original works on Brownian motion and the Brownian motor concept, stochastic resonance and dissipative systems. Other topics include, driven quantum tunneling, such as the discovery of coherent destruction of tunneling (CDT), phononics, relativistic statistical mechanics and the foundations of classical and quantum thermodynamics.
The Smoluchowski factor, also known as von Smoluchowski's f-factor is related to inter-particle interactions. It is named after Marian Smoluchowski.
Andrzej Kajetan Wróblewski – Polish experimental physicist, ordinary professor doctor habilitatus, dean of the Physics Department Warsaw University (1986–1989), Rector of the Warsaw University (1989–1993), President of the Academic Council of the Institute for the History of Science, Polish Academy of Sciences.
Sir Alan Herries Wilson, was a British mathematician and industrialist. He was educated at Wallasey Grammar School and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, obtaining a BA degree in mathematics in 1926. His graduate work was under the supervision of R. H. Fowler working on problems in quantum mechanics. There is now an Alan Wilson Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College.
Neil William Ashcroft was a British solid-state physicist.
Peter Fulde is a physicist working in condensed matter theory and quantum chemistry.
Werner Hofmann is a German professor of physics. He is director of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg.
Władysław J. (Wladek) Świątecki was a Polish theoretical and nuclear physicist. He was one of the first proponents of the island of stability for superheavy elements, showing that it appears in a mass formula influenced by the presence of closed nuclear shells; he is also known for several other contributions in nuclear structure research.
The Marian Smoluchowski Medal is a Polish annual science award conferred by the Polish Physical Society for contributions in the field of physics.
The Polish Physical Society is a professional scientific society of Polish physicists.
Ludger Wöste is a German physicist and professor at the Free University of Berlin. He is known for research in laser control of chemistry and laser-based weather control through the creation of plasma channels by laser filamentation in air.
