The Lars Onsager Lecture and Professorship

The Lars Onsager Lecture and Professorship

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Lars Onsager (1903–1976)

Lars Onsager (1903–1976)

Lars Onsager, 1968Lars Onsager as a student at NTH, 1920Lars Onsager was a Norwegian-American chemist and physicist. Onsager was born in Oslo. He held a Ch.E. degree (1925) from NTH (Norwegian Institute of Technology, later NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology).

Onsager migrated to the USA in 1928, and became an American citizen in 1945. Onsager was a J. Willard Gibbs Professor at Yale University.

Onsager was awarded the The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1968 for his work done in 1931 on irreversible thermodynamics.


Present Lars Onsager Lecture

Lars Onsager Lecture 2020Emmanuelle Charpentier

The 2020 Lars Onsager Lecturer:
Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier

 

Director Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin. Her lecture has been postponed due to the pandemic, but will be given later. Further details will follow.

For further information, please contact Professor Helge Holden, NTNU.

Previous Onsager Lecturers


Present Onsager Professor

Lars Onsager Professorship

Previous Lars Onsager Professors


Onsager medal

The Onsager Medal

The Onsager Lecturer and the Onsager Professor receive the Onsager Medal.

The Onsager Medal, obverse and reverse

Artist: Harald Wårvik. Minted by The Mint of Norway (Det Norske Myntverket), Kongsberg, Norway.

The Lars Onsager Archive

The Lars Onsager Archive

Thanks to the generosity of Lars Onsager's sons and daughter, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has established a Lars Onsager Archive.

The Lars Onsager Archive is located at the Dora Library (a repository library for the NTNU University Library) and the Gunnerus Library (the Special Collections of the NTNU University Library) in Trondheim, Norway.

A substantial part of the archive has now been made freely available in digital form:

Lars Onsager Archive

Biographical Material

Biographical Material

A general reference to the scientific works of Lars Onsager is:

  • The Collected Works of Lars Onsager (with commentary) 
    P.C. Hemmer, H. Holden, S.K. Ratkje, editors
    World Scientific, Singapore 1996
  • A biography on Lars Onsager (pdf)
    by P.C. Hemmer and E. Hiis Hauge is printed in the book «Norwegian Nobel Prize Laureates», (Olav Njølstad, ed.), Universitetsforlaget, 2006.
  • In Norwegian: Boken er også utgitt på norsk, «Norske nobelprisvinnere», (Olav Njølstad, red.) Universitetsforlaget, 2005.

Lars Onsager in Wikipedia

The Onsager Comittee

The Onsager Committee

The Lars Onsager Lecture and the Lars Onsager Professorship are awarded by the Onsager Committee which consists of:

  • Professor Helge Holden (Chairman), Department of Mathematical Sciences, NTNU (01.01.05 - 31.12.10)
  • Professor Arne Brataas, Department of Physics, NTNU (01.09.08 - 31.12.10)

Regulations for the Lars Onsager Lecture and the Lars Onsager Professorship.

The Nobel Prize 1968

The Nobel Prize 1968

Video at YouTube: King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, Lars Onsager and other nobilities and prize winners.


Yale University

Yale University

Lars Onsager, Yale University

Lars Onsager in his office at the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory at Yale University.


Onsager stamp

Onsager stamp

Lars Onsager on stamp, 2003

Lars Onsager on stamp. Norwegian Post's 2003 series of stamps with Nobel Laureates.