The Lars Onsager Lecture and Professorship
The Lars Onsager Lecture and Professorship
Lars Onsager (1903–1976)
Lars 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.
Lars Onsager Lecture 2024
The 2024 Lars Onsager Lecturer:
Sir Martin Hairer, KBE, FRS
Sir Martin Hairer KBE FRS from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland and Imperial College, London. Prof. Hairer is working in stochastic analysis and stochastic dynamics. He received the Fields Medal in mathematics in 2014, and the Breakthrough Prize in mathematics in 2021.
He will present his Onsager Lecture in the fall of 2024. For further details, please contact Prof. Helge Holden.
Lars Onsager Lecture 2020
Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin. She received the Kavli Prize in Nanoscience (2018), Wolf Prize in Medicine (2020), and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2020) "for the development of a method for genome editing” also known as CRISPR.
Her lecture will be on Tuesday 3 September 2024 at Gløshaugen. Her lecture has been delayed due to the pandemic.
For further information, please contact Prof. Helge Holden.
Lars Onsager Professorship
Onsager Professor 2024
Dr. Alexei Gruverman, the Charles Bessey Professor of Physics, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA.
For further details, please contact Prof. Dennis Meier or Prof. Helge Holden.
The Onsager Medal
The Onsager Lecturer and the Onsager Professor receive the Onsager Medal.
Artist: Harald Wårvik. Minted by The Mint of Norway (Det Norske Myntverket), Kongsberg, Norway.
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:
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.
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
- Professor Arne Brataas, Department of Physics, NTNU
Regulations for the Lars Onsager Lecture and the Lars Onsager Professorship.
The Nobel Prize 1968
Video at YouTube: King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, Lars Onsager and other nobilities and prize winners.
Yale University
Lars Onsager in his office at the Sterling Chemistry Laboratory at Yale University.
Onsager stamp
Lars Onsager on stamp. Norwegian Post's 2003 series of stamps with Nobel Laureates.