Siegfried Grossmann
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Siegfried Grossmann | |
|---|---|
 Grossmann in 2017 | |
| Born | 28 February 1930 |
| Died | 21 November 2025 Marburg, Germany |
| Alma mater | Free University of Berlin |
| Known for | Work on turbulence, statistical physics, and nonlinear dynamics |
| Awards | Max Planck Medal (1995) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | Free University of Berlin University of Marburg |
Siegfried Grossmann (28 February 1930 – 21 November 2025) was a German theoretical physicist who was awarded the Max Planck Medal, the major prize for achievements in theoretical physics.
Grossmann was born in Quednau, East Prussia near Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, Russia) and educated at the Pedagogical High School in Berlin, where he graduated in teaching. Whilst training to be a teacher he studied physics, mathematics and chemistry at the Free University of Berlin.
In 1959 he became an assistant at the university to Günther Ludwig, a respected German theoretical physicist and was promoted to study the inelastic scattering of Hydrogen molecules. He qualified two years later with a work on Quantum Mechanics and from 1963 worked as a conservator at Munich Technical University. In 1964 he obtained an extraordinary professorship at the University of Marburg, to which his mentor Ludwig had already moved. In 1968 he was given a full professorship in theoretical physics, retiring in 1998.
He was married with three children.
Grossmann died on 21 November 2025.[1]
Research
Grossmann is considered one of the founders of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. His work on turbulence contributed to an understanding of the transition from laminar to turbulent flow. He provided contributions to the description of a laser using nonlinear dynamics. With Stefan Thomae he produced a value for the Feigenbaum constant.[2]
He was also one of the leading theoreticians in the fields of fluid dynamics and theory of turbulence, stochastic processes, phase transitions, laser physics, nuclear physics, transport theory, Bose-Einstein condensation and the general statistical physics, as well as mathematical physics and functional analysis.
