The main contribution of the Dutch-born American physical chemist Peter Joseph William Debye (1884-1966) was the development of methods based on induced dipole moments and X-ray diffraction for the investigation of molecular structures.

Peter Debye was born on March 24, 1884, in Maastricht, Netherlands, the son of William and Maria Reumkens Debije. At the age of 17 Debye entered the Technical Institute of Aachen and earned his diploma in electrical engineering in 1905. He immediately obtained the position of assistant in technical mechanics at the institute. At the same time his interest in physics received strong promptings from Arthur Sommerfeld, then serving on the faculty. Debye followed Sommerfeld to the University of Munich and obtained his doctorate in physics by a mathematical analysis of the pressure of radiation on spheres of arbitrary electrical properties.

The dissertation and a 1907 paper on Foucault currents in rectangular conductors gave clear evidence of Debye's ability to...