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EIGHTH
INTERNATIONAL MEETING ON RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE STUDY OF RADIATION
EFFECTS IN MATTER.
Kerteminde, Denmark
20th -23th September, 2015 |
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Festschrift. With Peter Sigmund, REM8 honors an outstanding researcher and teacher who, through many years, has made numerous original and essential contributions to the theoretical understanding of radiation effects in matter, and who is widely respected as one of the real protagonists of the field. Peter was born in 1936 and educated in Southwest Germany. He studied Physics at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, the University of Göttingen and the Technical University of Aachen, and received his PhD at Aachen in 1962. After employments as a Research Fellow at the Research Establishment Risø and as a Lecturer at Århus University in Denmark, as a Research Scientist at Kernforschungsanlage Jülich in Germany and as a Visiting Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory in the U.S., he decided to settle in Denmark where he took a Lecturer’s position again at Århus University and later at Copenhagen University. In 1978, he became Professor at Odense University (presently Southern Danish University) where, after his official retirement in 2006, he is nowadays still active as an External Lecturer. Already in the group of his PhD supervisor, Günther Leibfried, Peter came in contact with the physics of atomic collisions. Through the years, his name became mainly associated with the theory of collisional sputtering, in particular in connection with his famous 1969 Physical Review paper which formed a milestone in the field (and collected more than 2600 citations so far). However, Peter has addressed ion-solid interaction in a much broader way, with fundamental contributions also to ion stopping and ranges, energy straggling, multiple scattering, thermal spike sputtering, and ion-induced surface roughening. Many of his papers have enduring and present-day impact in numerous fields such as nano-physics, thin film physics, surface |
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analytics, fusion research, extraterrestrial physics and medical physics. His review articles and book publications, ranging from his excellent early lecture series published in Revue Roumaine des Physique (1972) to the recently published monograph on Particle Penetration and Radiation Effects, Vol. 2 (Springer, 2014), are of invaluable importance as an information source and as educational material for young scientists and newcomers. Peter outstanding scientific work has been honored, among others, by the Welch Medal of the American Vacuum Society, by the elections as a Distinguished Fellow of the Argonne National Laboratory and as a Fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and by the title of an honorary doctor at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Peter has enriched many scientific meetings not only by excellent scientific contributions, but also as a musician in solo and chamber music performances during the social program. Aged 7, he had started piano lessons, and he developed to a top level non-professional player in classical and romantic music, which even enabled him to perform as a soloist in piano concertos with public orchestras in Denmark. It is particularly astounding that, after his official retirement, he took up a second and rather different instrument, the bassoon, and became quickly able to play chamber music and in high-level amateur orchestras also in this role.
Since 1962, Peter is married to Pia Sigmund, who worked as a teacher, but is renowned in Denmark as a story-teller and writer of books for school-children, in particular addressing Danish history but also the history of countries of the Near-East. Many of us have enjoyed Pia’s hospitality not only during scientific visits and meetings organized by Peter, but also during the almost legendary annual music days at their home, and have savored the charming atmosphere in Pia’s and Peter’s private environment.