| Authorised form of name | Salje; Ekhard Karl Hermann (1946-2025); physicist |
| Dates | 1946-2025 |
| Nationality | German |
| British |
| Place of birth | Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany, Europe |
| Date of birth | 26 October 1946 |
| Place of death | England, United Kingdom |
| Date of death | 24 February 2025 |
| Occupation | Physicist |
| Research field | Quantum optics |
| Theoretical physics |
| Geochemistry |
| Mineralogy |
| Nanomaterials |
| Experimental Physics |
| Condensed matter |
| Solid state physics |
| Crystallography |
| Physics |
| Activity | Education: University of Cambridge MA; University of Hanover PhD
Career:
Head of Department at the Institute for Crystallography and Petrology at the Leibniz University Hannover (1983); moved to Cambridge (1985); Professorship in Mineral Physics in the Department of Earth Sciences (1992); headed the Faculty of Earth Sciences in Cambridge (1998-2008); President of Clare Hall College (2001-2008); Member of the University Council of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (2011-2019, Chairman since 2015); Emeritus Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology.
Awards/Medals:
Abraham-Gottlob-Werner medal in mineralogy 1994
Schlumberger medal of the Mineralogical Society 1998
Humboldt Research Prize 2000
Ernst Ising prize for Physics 2002
Gold medal of the University of Hamburg 2002
Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Academiques 2004
Agricola medal for Applied Mineralogy 2006
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, first class (Germany) 2006
Werner Heisenberg medal 2017
Member Academia Europaea 2021 |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 14/03/1996 |
| Age at election | 49 |
| PublishedWorks | RCN 52093 |
| OtherInfo | Became one of the world leaders in applying the theoretical and experimental advances of physics to problems in mineralogy and solid-state-physics.
His work on feldspars showed how the internal state of order and strain in a mineral can be understood and related to its geological history via a few parameters in the Landau free energy. This approach has been successfully extended to kinetics and resulting textures.
He was first to use the line shape of ‘hard’ phonons to measure degree of order, a technique particularly useful in complex mineral structures.
He studied metal–insulator transition in terms of the behaviour of polaron gas.
He demonstrated atomic mechanisms of acoustic emission during mechanical and electric perturbations.
His work on multiferroic materials in physics and material sciences is internationally leading. |
| Source | The Royal Society Fellows Directory, Professor Ekhard Salje FRS [URL: https://royalsociety.org/people/ekhard-salje-12222/; last accessed: 09/09/2025]
ORCID, Ekhard Salje; Salje, [URL: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8781-6154; last accessed: 09/09/2025]
Universitat Wurzburg, News and Events, Ekhard Salje Deceased, 19 March 2025, [URL: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/news/detail/news/ekhard-salje-deceased/; last accessed: 09/09/2025] |
| Code | NA4711 |
Archives associated with this Fellow
| RefNo | Title | Date |
| EC/1996/32 | Salje, Ekhard Karl Hermann: certificate of election to the Royal Society | 1996 |
| IM/003990 | Salje, Ekhard Karl Hermann | 1996 |