Nicolaas Godfried van Kampen

Who was Nicolaas Godfried van Kampen?

Nicolaas 'Nico' Godfried van Kampen was a Dutch theoretical physicist, who worked mainly on statistical mechanics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

Van Kampen was born in Leiden, and was a nephew of Frits Zernike. He studied physics at Leiden University, where in 1952 under the direction of Hendrik Anthony Kramers he earned his PhD with thesis Contributions to the quantum theory of light scattering. He showed in his thesis how to deal with singularities in quantum mechanical scattering processes, which was an important step in the development of renormalization, according to Kramers. Van Kampen made fundamental contributions to non-equilibrium processes and in many-body theory. His work on non-equilibrium processes began in 1953 in the research group of Sybren Ruurds de Groot in Leiden. In 1955 Van Kampen joined the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Utrecht University, where he later became full professor and professor emeritus after his retirement.

His monograph Stochastic processes in physics and chemistry is considered a classic. In his 2002 book Waanwetenschap, Van Kampen condemned what he saw as pseudoscience, even within the scientific community; the book met with a mixed reaction — five scientists, including Vincent Icke, Floris Takens and Dennis Dieks, wrote a commentary on his book.