Werner Ebeling

By decision of the Academic Council of the Yukhnovskii Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the NAS of Ukraine on 20 February 2026, the title of Doctor honoris causa was conferred on Werner Ebeling (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany), for his outstanding contribution to the development of the statistical theory of charged particle systems and for his long-standing and fruitful cooperation with the Yukhnovskii Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the NAS of Ukraine.

Werner Ebeling is a German theoretical physicist specializing in statistical mechanics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and non-linear dynamics. In 1979, he founded and led a research group in statistical physics and non-linear dynamics at the Institute of Physics of Humboldt University of Berlin, where he served as professor until his retirement in 2001 and subsequently continued his work as professor emeritus. His research has contributed significantly to the development of statistical approaches to plasmas, electrolyte solutions, structure formation, self-organization, and evolutionary processes in physical systems.

Werner Ebeling was born on 15 September 1936 in Bad Suderode, a small village on the northern edge of the Harz Mountains in central Germany. He studied physics at the University of Rostock from 1954 to 1959. From 1959 to 1969, he worked as a research assistant in physics at the University of Rostock. In 1963, he received his doctorate with a thesis on the kinetic theory of weakly ionized plasmas and electrolyte solutions, supervised by Yu. Klimontovich, representing the academic school of M.M. Bogolyubov, and H. Falkenhagen, representing the academic school of P. Debye. In 1968, he completed his habilitation with the work “On the Statistical Theory of Bound States in Plasmas and Electrolytes”. In 1969, Ebeling was appointed lecturer in the Physics Section of the University of Rostock, and in 1970 he was promoted to Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Rostock. In 1977, he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (AdW). In 1979, Ebeling was appointed Professor at the Chair of Statistical Physics at Humboldt University of Berlin, a position he held until his retirement in 2001. From 1986 to 1990, he served as Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and was a member of the Senate of Humboldt University of Berlin. In 1989, he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences. During the period of German reunification, he became the first freely elected President of the Council of Humboldt University of Berlin and Chair of the University Statutory Commission in 1990.

The research interests of W. Ebeling are exceptionally broad and include problems of theoretical and statistical physics, irreversible thermodynamics, the theory of liquids and electrolytes, quantum statistics and the theory of non-ideal plasmas, stochastic processes, chemical reaction theory, entropy and predictability, as well as the theory of self-organization and evolutionary processes. He has also published works on the history of physics, philosophical problems of physics, and the application of the principles of self-organization to social processes.

Ebeling has published more than 600 scientific papers. His scientific output also includes numerous books and book chapters, both as author and co-author. As a scientific expert, Ebeling served on the editorial boards of a number of well-known scientific journals. He was also invited as a visiting professor to many universities, where he distinguished himself both as a teacher and as a researcher. For his scientific achievements, he received several awards, including the Leibniz Medal in 1977. After German reunification, he was awarded the Onsager Medal by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in 1996 for his contributions to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. In 1997, he received the Humboldt-Muttis Research Award from Spain in recognition of his collaborative work on complex systems. In 2022, he was awarded the Daniel Ernst Jablonski Medal of the Leibniz Society.

The scientific collaboration of W. Ebeling with the Yukhnovskii Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the NAS of Ukraine has a long history and began before the establishment of the Institute. Ebeling first visited Lviv in 1967, when he came to the Department of Theoretical Physics of Lviv University, which at that time was headed by I.R. Yukhnovskii. Later, in 1970 and 1973, he participated in statistical mechanics workshops organized by the Lviv Department of the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

W. Ebeling also took part in the “Statistical Physics: Modern Trends and Applications” conferences organized by ICMP in Lviv in 2009 and 2025, which were dedicated to the 100th anniversaries of the births of M. M. Bogolyubov and I. R. Yukhnovskii, respectively. At the 2025 conference, W. Ebeling delivered a lecture on the statistical theory of charged particle systems and on scientific cooperation in this field between the Lviv group of I. R. Yukhnovskii and the Rostock group of G. Kelbg. W. Ebeling was also a co-editor of a special issue of the journal Condensed Matter Physics dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of I. R. Yukhnovskii. In this issue, he contributed a review on the statistical theory of charged particle systems, including triple bound states, and presented an analysis of the collaboration in this field between the Lviv and Rostock scientific schools.