Prof. Dr Hans Dekker

Institute for Theoretical Physics

Science Park 904

University of Amsterdam

and

Private Institute for Advanced Study

Résidence Le Jardin

Lijnbaansgracht 209L

Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Biography:

Hans J. van Ommeren Dekker was born on January 18, 1947, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He studied physics at the University of Technology, in Delft, where he completed his studies under the supervision of Dirk Polder and Rudolf de L. Kronig, in 1971. He then joined the staff of the Netherlands Physics Laboratory, in The Hague, where he became head of the Theoretical Physics Group. In 1980 he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Nico G. van Kampen, at the University of Utrecht. During 1981-1982 he was Visiting Professor at the Department of Chemistry, at MIT Boston. He became Lorentz-van Iterson Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Amsterdam in 1989. Since 1998 he also holds the position of Director of the Private Institute for Advanced Study, in Amsterdam. His interests range from quantum mechanics to hydrodynamic turbulence.

Research highlights:

⚫ The systematic expansion of the Markovian master equation near a critical point (1980).

⚫ Exact solution of the spectral divergence problem for the quantum mechanical damped harmonic oscillator (1985).

⚫ Discovery of the weak damping depopulation factor in an exactly solvable model for quantum tunnelling and thermal activation (1988).

⚫ Low-dimensional theory of weak-to-strong friction turnover in thermal activation (with A. Maassen van den Brink, 1994).

⚫ Rigorous generalization of the Kramers Fokker-Planck equation from macrocanonical to microcanonical processes (with A. Maassen van den Brink, 1997).

⚫ Derivation of the temporal frequency spectrum for both normal and anomalous Kolmogorov scaling in hydrodynamic turbulence (2011).

⚫ A novel analysis of self-gravitating charge: the Einstein-Maxwell electron radius (2014).

Awards:

Le Poole Award (Delft, 1971)

Fulbright Foundation Award (1981)

Van Schoonevelt Prize and Medal (The Hague, 1992)

Panta Rhei Award (J.M. Burgers Centre, 1994)

Schulman Award (ICTP-Trieste, 1996)

Akzo-Nobel Prize Nomination (1999)

J.E. Hamilton Foundation Physics Award (2009)

Publications:

About 120 articles in refereed journals, and 60 in conference proceedings etc.

[https://researchgate.net/profile/hans_dekker3/publications]

Book:

Classical and Quantum Mechanics of the Damped Harmonic Oscillator (North-Holland: Physics Letters Series Vol. 80, Amsterdam, 1981)

[https://doi.org/10.1016/0370-1573(81)90033-8] [https://researchgate.net/publication/222990789]