Hans Dekker


Hans J. van Ommeren Dekker is a Dutch theoretical physicist in the line of Dirk Polder, Ralph Kronig, and Nico van Kampen. His scientific work inter alia involves laser theory, path integrals in curved spaces, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, dissipation in quantum mechanics, and hydrodynamic turbulence. He is director of the Private Institute for Advanced Study and professor emeritus at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Amsterdam.

Biography

Dekker studied physics at Delft University of Technology, in Delft, Netherlands, where he did research in acoustics in the group of Cornelis W. Kosten, and in electron optics with :nl:Jan Bart Le Poole.
In 1968 he was also chief editor of the Delft student periodical Het Orakel while he spent the summer of 1970 with an IAESTE/Nuffic grant working on thermoluminescent dosimeters at Tennessee Valley Authority, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, United States.
He completed his studies in theoretical physics under the supervision of Dirk Polder, Ralph Kronig, and Jaap Kokkedee .
Dekker then joined the staff of the Netherlands Physics Laboratory TNO, in The Hague, where he became head of the Theoretical Physics Group in 1971. Of prime interest at that time was the quantum theory of the laser and in the early seventies he thus got involved in the Synergetics summerschools in Erice, Sicily, Italy, on co-operative phenomena in complex systems, and in 1976 he was visiting scientist at the University of Stuttgart, Germany, in the group of Hermann Haken. In the later seventies his interest in stochastic laser theory lead to several papers on path integrals for nonlinear processes , also in curved Riemannian spaces. Meanwhile he also proposed a mathematical model in theoretical biology on rodent population dynamics .
In 1980 he received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Nico van Kampen at Utrecht University, Netherlands, concerning the systematic expansion of the master equation for Markov stochastic processes including a critical point . At about the same time Dekker wrote his monograph 'Classical and quantum mechanics of the damped harmonic oscillator', published in 1981 as a Physics Reports volume, which has become a standard reference for dissipation in quantum mechanics.
During 1981–1982 Dekker was NATO/Fulbright visiting professor at the Department of Chemistry, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, United States, with :de:Irwin Oppenheim, and at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, United States, with Kurt E. Shuler. He further was guest scientist at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights United States, in 1988, with Rolf Landauer and Martin Gutzwiller.
In 1989 he became Lorentz-:nl:van Iterson Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Amsterdam. His inaugural lecture is a plea for the concept of stochastic processes, both classical and quantum mechanical.
Dekker inter alia was visiting professor at the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, in 1987 and 1996 and invited lecturer at the Centennial Meeting of the Fondation Schlumberger/Louis de Broglie in :fr:Les Treilles, France, in 1992.
Since 1998 Dekker also is director of the Private Institute for Advanced Study, in Amsterdam, where he studied topics in hydrodynamic turbulence and general relativity.

Research highlights

About 120 articles in refereed journals, and 60 in conference proceedings etc.

Book