George Sawatzky

George Albert Sawatzky (born 16 May 1942, Winkler, Manitoba, Canada) is a Canadian physicist, known for his research in solid state physics and strongly correlated electron systems. He has co-developed the Cini-Sawatzky theory of the Auger effect and the ZSA (Zaanen-Sawatzky-Allen) classification of bandgaps in solids.

Education and career George A. Sawatzky earned in 1965 his B.S. in physics with Honours from the University of Manitoba and there in 1969 his PhD with thesis Some properties of Ferrimagnetic Spinels and their determination with the Mössbauer effect under the supervision of Allan H. Morrish. From 1969 to 1971 Sawatzky was a post-doc and member of the group led by Adrianus "Ad" J. Dekker and L. H. V. (Lucas) van der Woude at the University of Groningen and there from 1971 to 1979 was an associate professor and from 1979 to 1985 a professor in the Physical Chemistry Department. From 1985 to 2001 he was Professor of Applied and Solid State Physics at the University of Groningen. From 1986 to 1997 he was also director of the Materials Science Centre at the University of Groningen. In 2001 he was appointed a professor at the University of British Columbia. From 2002 to 2007, Sawatzky was Director of the Advanced materials and process engineering Laboratory at UBC and from 2010 to the present, he is Director of the Quantum Matter Institute and the MP/UBC Quantum Materials centre at UBC. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Osaka and the University of Paris. 1996 NWO-Spinoza award (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) 1996 (and subsequent years) ISI list of highly cited 1997 Nieuwsblad van het Noorden prize 2002 Knight in the order of the Dutch Lion 2002 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada 2003 Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society 2007 RSC Henry Marshall Tory Medal 2008 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London 2011 IFW Dresden Leibnitz medal

Editorial Boards 1992–1997 Editor of Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids 1994–2001 Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena (Advisory Editorial Board) 2006–2010 Associate editor Europhysics Letters