physics

Jens Lindhard

Jens Lindhard is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Jens Lindhard rather than just read about it. In short: Jens Lindhard (26 February 1922 – 15 October 1997) was a Danish physicist and professor at Aarhus University working on condensed matter physics, statistical physics and special relativity. He was the president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters between 1981 and 1988.

Key takeaways

Jens Lindhard belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Jens Lindhard to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Jens Lindhard from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Jens Lindhard (26 February 1922 – 15 October 1997) was a Danish physicist and professor at Aarhus University working on condensed matter physics, statistical physics and special relativity. He was the president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters between 1981 and 1988. He is known for the development of the Lindhard theory, that describes the behaviour of metals under the influence of electromagnetic fields, named in his honour. He is also known for the development of channelling theory, to describe the path of a charged particle in a crystalline solid.

Early life Jens Lindhard was born in Tystofte, Denmark in 1922, son of Erik and Agnes Lindhard. He was the youngest son of six, consisting of four girls and two boys. Jens' father was a professor at University of Copenhagen Faculty of Life Sciences but died young in 1928. Jens' older brother was a bomber in England and died during the Invasion of Normandy. Jens went to school at the Metropolitanskolen. Later, during his university studies, Jens joined the Danish Brigade in Sweden and also joined them back in the defence of the Danish-German border. He started his studies in physics at the Niels Bohr Institute and in 1945 he received a Master of Science degree in physics from University of Copenhagen.

Research During his university years, he worked under the supervision of Oskar Klein in Sweden on superconductivity, publishing his first major work on the subject in 1944. Later he moved to work with Rudolf Peierls in the University of Birmingham. There, in 1954, he published the first description of the dielectric function of metals in the linear response regime, today known as Lindhard theory. In 1950, he worked in close collaboration with Niels Bohr in Blegdamsvej on the penetration of particles in matter. There Lindhard, Morten Scharff and H. E. Schiøt developed what is now known as the LSS theory (carrying their initials), which describes the penetration of low-energy ions. He also worked in fundamental problems related to statistical physics and relativity. As a teaching assistant, he helped to verify the formulas and problems in Christian Møller's The Theory of Relativity. Later Lindhard would provide a solution to the controversy related to the transformation of temperature in special relativity. Lindhard moved to Aarhus University in 1957 in collaboration with experimentalist Karl Ove Nielsen, where he created and led a research group to study the penetration of charged particles in crystal lattices. During his time in Aarhus, Lindhard developed what is now known as the classical theory of channelling (sometimes also referred as Lindhard's theory) in continuum models in 1965.

Awards and membership Jens Lindhard received several awards including:

the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research in 1965 the H. C. Ørsted Medal in 1974 the Danish Physical Society Physics award in 1988 Honorary Doctorate degrees from Odense University in 1996 and Fudan University, Shanghai, in 1997 Jens Linhard was member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and a member of the Akademiet for de tekniske Videnskaber since 1962. We was president of the Royal Society from 1981–1988. He was also member of the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen since 1984.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Jens Lindhard

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Jens Lindhard claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Jens Lindhard before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Jens Lindhard ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Jens Lindhard

In research: Jens Lindhard appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Jens Lindhard in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Jens Lindhard is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1922 births, 1997 deaths, 20th-century Danish physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Jens Lindhard outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Jens Lindhard in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Jens Lindhard means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Jens Lindhard out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Jens Lindhard in simple terms?

Why does Jens Lindhard matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Jens Lindhard?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Jens Lindhard.