LARS ONSAGER - The National Academies Press

LARS ONSAGER 191
BROWN UNIVERSITY (1928-1933)
So Onsager had to move. Fortunately, an opening appeared
at Brown, where Charles A. Kraus was chairman of
the Chemistry Department. The two men were very different—Onsager
the young high-powered theorist and Kraus
the hard-headed experimentalist. "But Kraus," reports Cole,
"knew that Onsager would be good for Brown, and he signed
him up as a research instructor. ... A look at the University
catalogues for the Onsager years at Brown reveals that he
was listed at the bottom of the page simply as 'Mr. Onsager.'
The fact was that he had no Ph.D. He did all his work at
Brown that led to his Nobel Prize without the 'advantage' of
a Ph.D."
A lesser scientist might have been discouraged by the intellectual
isolation in which Onsager must have found himself
during those five years. The problems on which he was working
and the ideas he was developing can hardly have appealed
to his departmental colleagues. Speaking in 1973 of
his now classic work on irreversible processes, which appeared
in 1931, he said: "It wasn't doubted, but completely
ignored." "It was not until after the Second World War," confirms
Stig Claesson, commenting on the length of time before
the full import of Onsager's ideas was recognized, "that it
attracted great attention. The man was really ahead of his
time." 10
As chairman of the department Kraus was always after
Onsager to do an experiment of some sort rather than spending
all his time on theoretical work. One day Onsager told
him he had decided to try an experiment on the separation
of isotopes by thermal diffusion. "Fine," said Kraus, and was
10 S. Claesson, "The Nobel Prize for Chemistry" (presentation speech), Les Prix
Nobel en 1968, p. 42 (Stockholm: Imprimerie Royale P. A. Norstedt & Soner, 1972).
Also in: Nobel Lectures—Chemistry 1963-1970, p. 269 (Amsterdam: Elsevier).