EPJ B Colloquium - A retrospective on Hardy Gross’ work

Details

Published on 09 October 2018

In this EPJ B Colloquium, Carlos Fiolhais offers a brief retrospective on the important scientific contributions of Hardy Gross during 25 productive years of his career, from 1976, when he published the first paper his doctoral years, until 2000, when he moved from Würzburg to Berlin. Fiolhais traces all of Gross’ publications and points out the most impressive scientific achievements, punctuating the physics with episodes from the life of Hardy Gross and other physicists in his circle, which adds extra colour to this piece.

Hardy Gross revealed his unusual talent for theoretical physics since the very beginning of his academic studies. Right from the beginning Density Functional Theory (DFT) has been the favourite tool of Hardy Gross’s research. His main achievement in that period is the proof of an existence theorem for the Time-Dependent Density Functional (TD DFT) and the search for application schemes in atoms, molecules and solids, starting with linear response. He made notable contributions to the application of DFT and TD DFT to superconductors, in static and dynamic cases. Fiolhais concludes with the hope and expectation that much more is still to be expected from Gross’ next phase of scientific work.

This Colloquium is part of the EPJB special issue in honour of Hardy Gross.