Most of Peter Debye's professional work involved the application of physical laws to the structure and behavior of molecules. In the 1910s, for example, he determined the dipole moments of many molecules, obtaining results that allowed him to calculate the polarity of such molecules. In recognition of this work, the unit of dipole moment, the debye, was named in his honor. Debye was also awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in chemistry for this research, although he is perhaps best known for his contribution to the theory of electrolytic dissociation, the Debye-Hückel theory, announced in 1923. Driven out of Germany and the Netherlands during World War II, Debye immigrated to the United States and became professor of chemistry at Cornell University.

Debye was born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije on March 28, 1884, in Maastrict, the Netherlands. He is better known by the Anglicized form of his name, Peter Joseph William (or...