Photo credit: GFHund — File:Eigen,Manfred 1996 Göttingen.jpg (Wikimedia Commons) · CC BY 3.0
Manfred Eigen
1927–2019 · Germany · 20th century
Nobel Chemistry 1967
German physical chemist, director at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen, pioneer of fast-reaction kinetics and of the theory of molecular self-organization and evolution.
Nobel Prize work
Developed relaxation methods — temperature-jump and pressure-jump pulses — that disturb a chemical equilibrium for microseconds and let the system return while being monitored, enabling measurement of extremely fast reactions such as proton transfers that were previously unmeasurable.
Fields
Related topics
Chemical equilibrium, equilibrium constant
How the reaction quotient compares with the equilibrium constant, and how K depends on the balanced equation and temperature.
Reaction rate, reaction order
Measuring how fast concentrations change, and how the empirical order of a reaction is read from its concentration–time behaviour.