Alan J. Heeger | |
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.jpg) Heeger in 2013 | |
| Born | Alan Jay Heeger (1936-01-22)January 22, 1936 (age 89) Sioux City, Iowa, United States |
| Alma mater | University of Nebraska University of California, Berkeley |
| Known for | SSH model |
| Spouse | Ruth (2 children) |
| Awards | Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2000) Balzan Prize ENI award Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize (1983) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Physics,Chemistry |
| Institutions | University of Pennsylvania University of California, Santa Barbara |
| Thesis | Studies on the magnetic properties of canted antiferromagnets (1962) |
| Doctoral advisor | Alan Portis |
| Doctoral students | Fan Chunhai (postdoc student) |
Alan Jay Heeger (born January 22, 1936) is an Americanphysicist,academic andNobel Prize laureatein chemistry.
Heegar was elected as a member into theNational Academy of Engineering in 2002 for co-founding the field of conducting polymers and for pioneering work in making these novel materials available for technological applications.
Heeger was born inSioux City, Iowa, into aJewish family. He grew up inAkron, Iowa, where his father owned a general store. At age nine, following his father's death, the family moved to Sioux City.[1]
Heeger earned a B.S. in physics and mathematics from theUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1957, and aPh.D in physics from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1961. From 1962 to 1982 he was on the faculty of theUniversity of Pennsylvania. In 1982 he commenced his present appointment as a professor in thePhysics Department and the Materials Department at theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara. His research has led to the formation of numerous start-up companies including Uniax,Konarka, and Sirigen, founded in 2003 byGuillermo C. Bazan, Patrick J. Dietzen, Brent S. Gaylord. Alan Heeger was a founder of Uniax, which was acquired byDuPont.
He won theNobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 along withAlan G. MacDiarmid andHideki Shirakawa "for their discovery and development ofconductive polymers"; They published their results onpolyacetylene aconductive polymer in 1977.[2][3] This led to the construction of theSu–Schrieffer–Heeger model, a simple model fortopological insulators.
He had won theOliver E. Buckley Prize of theAmerican Physical Society in 1983 and, in 1995, theBalzan Prize for Science of Non-Biological Materials.
His sons are theneuroscientistDavid Heeger and the immunologist Peter Heeger.
In October 2010, Heeger participated in theUSA Science and Engineering Festival's Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students engage in an informal conversation with a Nobel Prize-winning scientist over a brown-bag lunch.[4] Heeger is also a member of theUSA Science and Engineering Festival's Advisory Board.[5] Heeger has been a judge of theSTAGE International Script Competition three times (2006, 2007, 2010).[6]
"Perhaps the greatest pleasure of being a scientist is to have an abstract idea, then to do an experiment (more often a series of experiments is required) that demonstrates the idea was correct; that is, Nature actually behaves as conceived in the mind of the scientist. This process is the essence of creativity in science. I have been fortunate to have experienced this intense pleasure many times in my life." Alan J Heeger,Never Lose Your Nerve![7]
Journal Articles:
Technical Reports:
Heeger, Alan J (2015).Never Lose Your Nerve!.doi:10.1142/9724.ISBN 978-981-4704-85-4., World Scientific Publishing,ISBN 978-981-4704-85-4
including the Nobel lecture December 8, 2000Semiconducting and Metallic Polymers: The Fourth Generation of Polymeric Materials| International | |
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