In honour of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Alfred Seeger on the occasion of his 80th birthday

Abstract

AbstractOn 31 August 2007, Alfred Seeger, Emeritus Professor of Solid State Physics at the University of Stuttgart and former Director at the Max‐Planck‐Institut für Metallforschung in Stuttgart will celebrate his 80th birthday. This is a perfect occasion for the Editors and the Staff of physica status solidi to express their deepest appreciation and gratitude to an eminent scientist, who has shaped our journal as a Founding Editor, a member of the Editorial Board, as well as an author and referee for more than 40 years!Alfred Seeger was born in Stuttgart in 1927 and studied Physics at the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart from 1946 to 1949. He received his Ph.D. in March 1951 at the tender age of 24 and, following post‐doctoral stays in Bristol and Cambridge, obtained the newly founded Chair of Solid State Physics in Stuttgart in 1959. In 1965, he also became the Director of the Institute of Physics at the Max‐Planck‐Institut für Metallforschung. Alfred Seeger's scientific oeuvre includes more than 650 publications in international scientific journals, which so far have been cited more than 13000 times. In recognition of his important contributions to solid state physics, Alfred Seeger has received numerous awards and honours, e.g. the Gold Medal of the Japanese Institute of Metals and the German–South African Alexander von Humboldt Prize.Almost in parallel to his outstanding career as an internationally renowned scientist, Alfred Seeger also has had a strong influence on the fate and on the scientific impact of physica status solidi ever since he agreed to become a Founding Editor of the journal in 1960. We all value him as a very productive and reliable member of the Editorial Board, always willing to help and giving honest and critical advice when needed. Most impressive are also his scientific contributions to the journal. Starting from three papers published in Volume 1 of physica status solidi, Alfred Seeger has contributed on the average four articles per year between 1961 and 1971, and about one article per year from 1972 to 2004. These sum up to a total of 79 papers published in physica status solidi so far with Alfred Seeger as first author or as a co‐author, which have been cited more than 2500 times as up to now. The two contributions with the highest impact are the 1968 paper of Seeger and Chik on “Diffusion Mechanisms and Point Defects in Silicon and Germanium” [phys. stat. sol. 29, 455 (1968)] and the article on “Interpretation of Self‐Diffusion and Vacancy Properties in Copper” [Mehrer and Seeger, phys. stat. sol. 35, 313 (1969)].On behalf of all Editors of physica status solidi, the entire editorial staff, as well as many friends and colleagues, I personally want to thank Alfred Seeger for nearly 50 years of invaluable support of our journal as an Editor and a scientist. We all wish him good health and many more productive years to come. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)