, August 15, 2001) was an Austrian-born, Dutch physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

 and one of the founders of the field of non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...

. He is the father of Harvard University physics professor Eric Mazur

Eric Mazur

Eric Mazur is a prominent physicist and educator at Harvard University. Mazur is known for his work in experimental ultrafast optics and condensed matter physics and a national leader in science education...

.

Family

Peter Mazur was born on December 11, 1922 in Vienna, Austria. His father, Karl Georg Mazur, a business man, and mother, Anna Zula Lecker, frequently moved during Mazur's youth. In 1931 the family left for Berlin, where Mazur attended the Franzősisches Gymnasium. Two years later the family left Germany to escape the growing threat of National Socialism. After spending one year in Switzerland they moved to Paris where Mazur attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly

Lycée Janson de Sailly

Lycée Janson de Sailly is a lycée located in the XVIe arrondissement of Paris, France. It is generally considered as one of the most prestigious lycées in Paris...

. In 1939 Mazur moved to The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

 in the Netherlands, but in 1940 the occupying Nazis no longer permitted Jews to live near the seacoast and the family moved to Zeist. In 1942 Mazur and his family went into hiding and he spent three years on various farms in the Dutch countryside. One month after the liberation of the Netherlands at the end of World War II, Mazur was reunited with his parents.

Education

After the end of the war, Mazur studied Chemistry at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. In 1951, Mazur obtained his doctorate under the direction of Sybren de Groot with a thesis entitled, "Thermodynamics of Transport Phenomena in Liquid Helium-2". The results were in good agreement with experiments done at the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory in Leiden, the Netherlands.

Career

After a period as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park

University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

 in 1953, Mazur became an associate professor at Leiden University

Leiden University

Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close...

 in 1954. In 1955, he and de Groot, who had also moved to Leiden, founded the Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics at Leiden University. In 1961, Mazur became a full professor, and when de Groot left in 1963, he became director of the institute. He filled this position in his own distinctive way for 25 years until he became emeritus in 1988. Under the direction of de Groot and Mazur, the institute grew substantially and eventually established the Lorentz Chair, a prestigious special professorship.

Mazur served on the boards of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics

International Union of Pure and Applied Physics

The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics is an international non-governmental organization devoted to the advancement of physics...

 (1966-84) and the Dutch Foundation for Fundamental Research of Matter (1970-85). In 1987, Queen Beatrix made Mazur a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.

Work

In his first years at Leiden University, Mazur studied the classical and quantum molecular foundations of non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics

Non-equilibrium thermodynamics is a branch of thermodynamics that deals with systems that are not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Most systems found in nature are not in thermodynamic equilibrium; for they are changing or can be triggered to change over time, and are continuously and discontinuously...

. Significant results included the derivation of the Langevin equation

Langevin equation

In statistical physics, a Langevin equation is a stochastic differential equation describing the time evolution of a subset of the degrees of freedom. These degrees of freedom typically are collective variables changing only slowly in comparison to the other variables of the system...

 with Irwin Oppenheim and the classic paper on harmonic oscillator systems by George Ford, Mark Kac

Mark Kac

Mark Kac was a Polish mathematician. His main interest was probability theory. His question, "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" set off research into spectral theory, with the idea of understanding the extent to which the spectrum allows one to read back the geometry. Kac completed his Ph.D...

, and Mazur, which was published in the Journal of Mathematical Physics (in 1965). Mazur's work in the 1950s and 1960s culminated in the publication of Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics (North Holland and Interscience, 1962), written by de Groot and Mazur. This book, translated into several languages, became a classic in the field and was later republished as a series of classic monographs.

Mazur's work in subsequent years addressed a variety of problems in statistical mechanics. He had a good nose for problems ripe to be investigated. To describe diffusion of large particles in fluids, he introduced, together with Dick Bedeaux, the concept of induced forces in 1974. This concept was used to derive generalizations of Faxén's theorem and to develop a theory for the viscosity of a suspension. In 1976, Mazur, with Bedeaux and Alfonso Albano, gave the first systematic formulation of nonequilibrium thermodynamics for surfaces. This formulation opened a new field, which is still in active development. And Mazur, Wim van Saarloos, and Carlo Beenakker

Carlo Beenakker

Carlo W. J. Beenakker is a professor at Leiden University and leader of the university's mesoscopic physics group, established in 1992.Born in Leiden, he graduated there in 1982 and obtained his doctorate two years later...

 developed an algebraic method around 1982 to successfully describe hydrodynamic interactions between arbitrary numbers of particles using induced forces. This was a breakthrough in the field.

After retiring in 1988, Mazur remained active. In 1991, he derived, with Bedeaux, the Langevin equation for a Brownian particle using only causality and time reversal invariance. From 1994 to 2000, Mazur, together with J. Miguel Rubi, used the method of internal degrees of freedom to describe fluctuations in the context of nonequilibrium thermodynamics. In 2001, he and Bedeaux developed nonequilibrium thermodynamics for quantum systems.