Wim van Saarloos
{{Short description|Dutch physicist}}
{{Infobox academic
| name = Wim van Saarloos
| image = Wim van Saarloos.jpg
| birth_date =
| birth_place = Franeker, Netherlands
| nationality = Dutch
| occupation = Professor of Theoretical Physics
| title =
| awards = Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences KNAW
Fellow, the American Physical Society
| website =
| education = Undergraduate Engineering degree in physics
PhD in theoretical physics
| alma_mater = Delft University of Technology
University of Leiden
| thesis_title = On nonlinear hydrodynamic fluctuations
| thesis_url =
| thesis_year = 1982
| workplaces = Leiden University
}}
Wim van Saarloos is a Dutch physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at Leiden University (emeritus since July 2021).{{cite web |title=Wim van Saarloos |url=https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/wim-van-saarloos#tab-1 |website=Universiteit Leiden}}
Van Saarloos has written over 280 papers and has been cited over 12000 times.{{cite web |title=Wim van Saarloos |url=https://scholar.google.nl/citations?user=Wr74kkEAAAAJ&hl=nl |website=Google Scholar}} His research interests include Statistical Physics, non-equilibrium pattern formation and soft condensed matter physics. He has also done work on front propagation into unstable states.{{cite web |title=Wim van Saarloos |url=https://homes.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~saarloos/ |website=Lorentz Center}}
Van Saarloos was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2007{{cite web|url=https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm?initial=S|title= APS Fellow Archive}} and received various honors and awards for his research. For founding the Lorentz Center in Leiden, and for bringing the center to fruition as the first director from 1997 to 2009, he received a royal distinction. Since 2009 he has been mostly active promoting science and strengthening the Dutch science system, and on the European level. He was the chair of the Energy Steering Panel of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), of which he serves as president from 2023-2025.{{cite web|url=https://easac.eu/programmes/energy/steering-panel-members/|title= Energy Steering Panel}}{{cite web|url=https://easac.eu/news/details/prof-wim-van-saarloos-elected/#:~:text=Prof.-,Wim%20van%20Saarloos%20elected%20next%20EASAC%20President,for%20the%20term%202023%2D2025.|title=Prof. Wim van Saarloos elected next EASAC President|date=10 May 2021 }} He also presided the Permanent Committee National Institutes of NWO and Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).{{cite web|url=https://www.nwo.nl/en/pcni|title= Permanent Committee on National Institutes}} Earlier, he served as a member of the strategic advisory board of the EU Flagship Quantum Technology,{{cite web|url=https://qt.eu/about-quantum-flagship/newsroom/sab-official-established/|title= Quantum Flagship Strategic Advisory Board established}} and the High Level Strategy Group on Industrial Technologies.{{cite web|url=https://era.gv.at/news-items/commission-sets-up-high-level-strategy-group-on-industrial-technologies/|title= Commission sets up High-level Strategy Group on Industrial Technologies}} He is presently a member of the Board of Trustees of Sense about Science{{Cite web |date=2016-09-14 |title=Board of trustees - Sense about Science |url=https://senseaboutscience.org/who-we-are/board-of-trustees/ |access-date=2024-07-02 |language=en-GB}} and the Supervisory Board of the University of Groningen.{{cite web|url=https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/latest-news/news/archief2021/nieuwsberichten/wim-van-saarloos-benoemd-tot-lid-raad-van-toezicht?lang=en|title= Wim van Saarloos appointed member of Supervisory Board|date= 25 January 2021}}
Education
From 1973 to 1978, van Saarloos attended Delft University of Technology where he received an undergraduate Engineering degree in physics. He obtained his doctorate in 1982 in theoretical physics (cum laude) from Leiden University, for his thesis "On nonlinear hydrodynamic fluctuations". Right after this, he went for his Postdoctoral research at AT&T Bell Laboratories.{{cite web |date=31 May 2024 |title=Wim Van Saarloos |url=https://www.interacademies.org/person/wim-van-saarloos |website=InterAcademies Partnership}}
Career
Van Saarloos was member of technical staff in the Materials Physics Research Department from 1984 to 1990 at AT&T Bell Laboratories.{{cite web |title=Wim van Saarloos |url=https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/van_Saarloos_Wim |website=Academia Europaea}} In 1991 he joined the Institute-Lorentz for theoretical physics of the physics department of Leiden University. With two colleagues he founded the Lorentz Center in Leiden, an international workshop center in the sciences, and of which he was the first Director from 1997 to 2009.{{cite web|url=https://www.lorentzcenter.nl/history-in-brief.html|title= History in brief}}
Van Saarloos was the director at the FOM Foundation from 2010 to 2015, the Foundation for Fundamental Research which was also a part of the NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) for Scientific Research.{{cite web|url=https://www.differ.nl/node/2910|title= WIM VAN SAARLOOS NEW DIRECTOR OF FOM FOUNDATION}} In 2015 and 2016, he served as Director Transition NWO.{{cite web|url=https://www.cwi.nl/news/2016/programme-director-nwo-transition-become-vice-president-knaw-effect-1-september-2016|title= PROGRAMME DIRECTOR NWO TRANSITION TO BECOME VICE PRESIDENT KNAW WITH EFFECT FROM 1 SEPTEMBER 2016}} Back in academia and in particular again as professor in Leiden since late 2016, he was active within the KNAW, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he served as vice president from 2016 till 2018, and as president from 2018 to 2020.{{cite web|url=https://www.knaw.nl/en/about-us/organisation/president-oud|title= WIM VAN SAARLOOS}}
Research
Van Saarloos has focused his research on theoretical physics, in particular in statistical and condensed matter physics. His work in pattern formation in non-equilibrium systems centers on the development of the amplitude equation description of systems exhibiting a transition to standing waves. With Hohenberg he developed a classification of fronts, pulses, sources and sinks in such systems.
=Condensed matter and statistical physics=
Together with his thesis advisor Mazur, van Saarloos calculated the mobility tensors submerged in viscous fluid of an arbitrary number of spheres in an expansion of power series.{{cite web|url=https://homes.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~saarloos/Papers/Physica_115A_21.pdf|title= MANY-SPHERE HYDRODYNAMIC INTERACTIONS AND MOBILITIES IN A SUSPENSION}} Their expressions, which involve three- and four particle interactions, provide the basis for many particle hydrodynamic simulations.
Van Saarloos' work on propagating fronts on a number of years culminated in a paper together with Ebert in which they derived the universal asymptotic behavior of a large class of fronts – so-called pulled fronts—propagating into an unstable state. The review van Saarloos wrote on this type of fronts propagation, which occurs in many disciplines in the natural sciences, is his most highly cited paper.{{cite web|url=https://homes.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~saarloos/Papers/review.pdf|title= Front propagation into unstable states}}
Together with Hohenberg he worked in particular on the classification of coherent structures (fronts, pulses sources and sinks) in the one-dimensional complex Ginzburg-Landau equation and its generalizations, which is the proper amplitude equation for traveling wave pattern forming systems.{{cite CiteSeerX |title=Fronts, Pulses, sources and sinks in Generalized complex Ginzburg-Landau equation|citeseerx=10.1.1.78.8054}}
With Varma and Nussinov, van Saarloos reviewed the variety of ways in which Landau Fermi liquids can break down, giving rise to singular behavior.{{cite journal|title= Singular or non-Fermi liquids|year= 2002|doi= 10.1016/S0370-1573(01)00060-6|arxiv= cond-mat/0103393|last1= Varma|first1= C.M.|last2= Nussinov|first2= Z.|last3= Van Saarloos|first3= Wim|journal= Physics Reports|volume= 361|issue= 5–6|pages= 267–417|bibcode= 2002PhR...361..267V|s2cid= 119085945}} Together with Morozov, van Saarloos predicted that viscoelastic Poiseuile flow in a straight channel would exhibit a nonlinear instability at low Reynolds numbers and high Weissenberg numbers. The predicted instability was later experimentally observed. Together with van Hecke and several coworkers van Saarloos contributed to the understanding of force distributions in static granular packings and of the jamming transition in granular media.{{cite journal|title= Force Network Ensemble: A New Approach to Static Granular Matter|year= 2004|doi= 10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.054302|arxiv= cond-mat/0308225|last1= Snoeijer|first1= Jacco H.|last2= Vlugt|first2= Thijs J. H.|last3= Van Hecke|first3= Martin|last4= Van Saarloos|first4= Wim|journal= Physical Review Letters|volume= 92|issue= 5|page= 054302|pmid= 14995308|bibcode= 2004PhRvL..92e4302S|s2cid= 159160}}
Van Saarloos was co-editor of the book Dynamical Heterogeneities in Glasses, Colloids, and Granular Media in which he surveyed the theoretical and experimental research that deals with glassy physics{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KWOS_qvgOFsC&dq=info:hrddZUKSeAcJ:scholar.google.com&pg=PP1|title= Dynamical Heterogeneities in Glasses, Colloids, and Granular Media|isbn= 978-0-19-162130-7|last1= Berthier|first1= Ludovic|last2= Biroli|first2= Giulio|last3= Bouchaud|first3= Jean-Philippe|last4= Cipelletti|first4= Luca|last5= Saarloos|first5= Wim van|date= 14 July 2011|publisher= OUP Oxford}} and wrote the textbook Soft Matter: concepts, phenomena and applications together with Vitelli and Zeravcic,{{Cite web |date=2024-03-26 |title=Soft Matter {{!}} Princeton University Press |url=https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691191300/soft-matter |access-date=2024-07-02 |website=press.princeton.edu |language=en}} which is supported by the website softmatterbook.online.
=The Dutch Polder Model in science and research=
In a significant essay together with his predecessor as academy president, van Saarloos highlighted how research and education together have led to the success of this small country becoming a key player in the world of science and research. They also discussed how little is being invested in its research base and how this, together with increased international competition and increasing student numbers, erodes these trusted foundations. The authors then made suggestions about the ways in which the country can recover and relish in their big successes while making sure that research plays a big part in their nation's future.{{cite web|url=https://homes.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/~saarloos/Papers/The-dutch-polder-model-in-science-and-research.pdf|title= The Dutch Polder Model in science and research}}
Awards and honors
- 1982- Shell travel award, Royal Dutch
- 1995-Center of Excellence award, Shell Research
- 1999-Franco-Hollandais Descartes-Huygens Prize for French-Dutch collaboration
- 2004-Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW){{cite web|url=https://www.knaw.nl/leden/saarloos |title=Wim van Saarloos |language=nl |publisher=Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences |date= |access-date=2 December 2023}}
- 2007-Fellow of the American Physical Society{{cite web|url=https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm?initial=S&year=2023&unit_id=&institution= |title=APS Fellow Archive - S |publisher=American Physical Society |date= |access-date=2 December 2023}}
- 2008-Physica Prize
- 2008-Elected Outstanding Referee, American Physical Society
- 2008-Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion{{cite web|url=https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/nieuws/2014/05/dr.ir.-w.-van-saarloos-wordt-lid-raad-van-toezicht |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220529090955/https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/nieuws/2014/05/dr.ir.-w.-van-saarloos-wordt-lid-raad-van-toezicht |title=Dr.ir. W. van Saarloos wordt lid Raad van Toezicht |language=nl |publisher=Leiden University |date=6 May 2024 |archive-date=29 May 2022}}
- 2012-Elisabeth Parvé Steyn prize{{cite web|url=https://www.unesco.nl/sites/default/files/2018-09/jurysamenstelling_2018_loreal_unesco_for_women_in_science_beurzenprogramma.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190530054916/https://www.unesco.nl/sites/default/files/2018-09/jurysamenstelling_2018_loreal_unesco_for_women_in_science_beurzenprogramma.pdf |title=Jurysamenstelling 2018 |language=nl |website=unesco.nl |date= |archive-date=30 May 2019}}
- 2013-Honorary member Vereniging voor Technische Physica
- 2017-Member of the Academia Europaea{{cite web|url=https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/van_Saarloos_Wim |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230621132436/https://www.ae-info.org/ae/Member/van_Saarloos_Wim |title=Wim van Saarloos |publisher=Academia Europaea |date= |archive-date=21 June 2023}}
- 2021-Honorary doctorate of the University of Twente{{cite web|url=https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/latest-news/news/archief2022/nieuwsberichten/wim-van-saarloos-ontvangt-eredoctoraat-van-universiteit-twente |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230330040128/https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/latest-news/news/archief2022/nieuwsberichten/wim-van-saarloos-ontvangt-eredoctoraat-van-universiteit-twente |title=Wim van Saarloos to receive honorary doctorate from University of Twente |publisher=University of Groningen |date=20 May 2022 |archive-date=30 March 2023}}
Bibliography
=Books=
- Dynamical Heterogeneities in Glasses, Colloids, and Granular Media (2011) ISBN 9780191621918
=Selected articles=
- van Saarloos, W., & Hohenberg, P. C. (1992). Fronts, pulses, sources and sinks in generalized complex Ginzburg-Landau equations. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 56(4), 303-367.
- Ebert, U., & van Saarloos, W. (2000). Front propagation into unstable states: universal algebraic convergence towards uniformly translating pulled fronts. Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, 146(1-4), 1-99.
- Varma, C. M., Nussinov, Z., & van Saarloos, W. (2002). Singular or non-Fermi liquids. Physics Reports, 361(5-6), 267-417.
- van Saarloos, W. (2003). Front propagation into unstable states. Physics Reports, 386(2-6), 29-222.
- Morozov, A. N. & van Saarloos, W. (2007). An introductory essay on subcritical instabilities and the transition to turbulence in visco-elastic parallel shear flows, Phys. Rep. 447, 112-143.
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- {{google scholar id|Wr74kkEAAAAJ}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saarloos, Wim van}}
Category:Academic staff of Leiden University
Category:Delft University of Technology alumni
Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society
Category:Knights of the Order of the Netherlands Lion
Category:Leiden University alumni
Category:Members of Academia Europaea
Category:Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences