orig. Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije
born March 24, 1884, Maastricht, Neth.
died Nov. 2, 1966, Ithaca, N.Y., U.S.
Dutch-born U.S. physical chemist.
His first important research, on electric dipole moments, advanced knowledge of the arrangement of atom s in molecule s and of the distances between atoms. He showed that X-ray crystallography worked on powders, obviating the difficult first step of preparing good crystals. In 1923 he and Erich Hückel extended Svante Arrhenius 's theory of the dissociation of salt s in solution, proving that ionization is complete. He also investigated light scattering in gases. He won the Nobel Prize in 1936.