Peter Fulde

Who is Peter Fulde?

Peter Fulde is a physicist working in condensed matter theory and quantum chemistry.

Fulde received a PhD degree at the University of Maryland in 1963. After spending more than one year as a postdoc with M. Tinkham in Berkeley, he returned in 1965 to Germany where he obtained a chair for theoretical physics in 1968 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/M. From 1971-74 he was in charge of the theory group of the Institute Max von Laue-Paul Langevin in Garching. In 1971 he became a director at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart where he served until 1993 when he became the founding director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden. After his retirement in 2007 he became president of the Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics and a faculty member at POSTECH in Pohang. He directed the center until 2013.

Fulde has made numerous contributions to Condensed matter physics including superconductivity and correlated electrons in molecules and solids. Particicularly known is the Fulde-Ferrell-Larkin-Ovchinnikov phase which may occur when fermions with imbalanced populations are paired.