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Winfried Petry is an internationally renowned scientist in the field of condensed matter and research with neutrons. His early research was dedicated to the pico- and nanoseconds dynamics of disordered systems near the solidification. He succeeded in establishing the proof that very different systems like proteins, inorganic and organic and metallic glasformers follow universal scale laws. By systematically measuring the vibration dynamics of elementary metals he was able to show that most of them condense in the open body cubic centered (bcc) structure due to their high vibration entropy. High resolution quasielastic neutron scattering revealed the atomic diffusion process in metals, namely by nearest neighbor jumps into vacancies. The common point in all his works is that functional properties of materials can be explained on the basis of atomic motion.

In 2002, Winfried Petry became the Scientific Director of the Neutron Source FRM II. In this capacity,he was in charge of the design and the set-up of the instrumentation of the facility. From the very beginning, he opened the facility to the international scientific competition. In a first step, he solicited numerous research groups at universities, at Max Planck institutes and at the For-schungszentrum Jülich to actively participate in the set-up and operation of the instruments at FRM II. This collaboration resulted in the foundation of the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) in 2011. The MLZ is committed to exploit the scientific use of neutrons. Today, about 1000 scientists per year perform their experiments at the MLZ, with a share of about 50 % of international scientists; typically, the beam time available is overbooked by the factor of two. Today MLZ is the neutron research center with the widest applications worldwide. The German Federal Government pro-vides about 50 % of the funds of MLZ.

The FRM II is a partner in the research and development efforts made worldwide to qualify high density uranium fuels, a prerequisite for converting the neutron source to lower enriched uranium fuel. Winfried Petry was the head of the respective working group at the FRM II since 2003. Up to now, he advises his successor, Prof. Peter Müller-Buschbaum, on this very special topic.

Short Biography

Memberships and honours

Awards

2006 Honorary Professor of the Chinese Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE)

2008 Cross of Merit of the German Federal Republic

2018 Honorary Member of the Kerntechnische Gesellschaft (KTG e.V.)

 You can download "Explanations of honors and awards" here [PDF 215 KB]