Prof Volker Heine FRS

Biography

Professor Volker Heine FRS (born Hamburg 1930) arrived in Cambridge from New Zealand in 1954 to do his PhD with Prof. NF Mott.

After some junior positions he was made a University Professor in Cambidge and Fellow of Clare College by 1960. He was for many years the Head of the Theory of Condensed Matter (solids, liquids and polymers) Group in the Cavendish Lab. and also helped to start and organise an annual series of 8 lectures from about 1970 to 1983 (initiated by PW Anderson) on the Social  Responsibility of Science. He retired in 1998 and continues to live in the village of Impington just outside Cambridge.

His research has concerned the electronic structure of solid materials (particularly metals, semiconductors, alloys and some incommensurately modulated minerals) and their related properties in over 200 papers with graduate students and other co-workers, the last appearing in 2024 (with S. Chen) on Understanding Metal Bonding.

He is also known for his book ‘Introduction to the Use of Group Theory in Quantum Mechanics’ published in 1960.