Siegfried Hess

Prof. Dr. Siegfried Hess is a Professor at the Technical University of Berlin, where he heads the Statistical Physics: Transport Theory group at the Institute of Theoretical Physics. He served as speaker of the Sonderforschungsbereich 605 "Elementarreibereignisse" until December 2001 and was involved with SFB 335 "Anisotrope Fluide" until December 1998.

Prof. Hess received his doctorate in 1967 from Erlangen with the thesis "Verallgemeinerte Boltzmanngleichung für mehratomige Gase" under the supervision of Ludwig Waldmann. His academic genealogy traces back to Albert Einstein with an Einstein number of 3 through Arnold Sommerfeld and Ludwig Waldmann.

His research spans multiple areas of statistical physics and transport phenomena with particular focus on:

• Anisotropic fluids and liquid crystals (nematic, cholesteric, smectic, discotic, cubatic)
• Molecular dynamics simulations of complex fluids
• Non-Newtonian viscosity and plastic flow behaviors
• Thermodynamic properties and transport coefficients
• Boundary and surface effects in fluid systems
• Relaxation processes near phase transitions

Prof. Hess has supervised numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers who have contributed to fields including polymer physics, colloidal systems, and liquid crystal dynamics. His research group maintained strong collaborations through multiple DFG-funded research centers and organized regular seminars on statistical physics topics.

His methodological approach combined irreversible thermodynamics, kinetic theory (Boltzmann, Kirkwood-Smoluchowski, and Fokker-Planck equations), and molecular dynamics simulations to investigate complex fluid behavior under various conditions.