Peter Schattschneider


Peter Schattschneider is an Austrian Physicist and Science-Fiction-Writer, currently a retired Professor at the Institute of Solid State Physics and a staff member of the USTEM special unit of the Vienna University of Technology. His research focuses on electron microscopy, specifically on Electron energy loss spectroscopy and the inelastic interactions between electrons and matter. He is also interested in the history of physics, the science in Science Fiction, and the role of science in society. His group was responsible for the discovery of Electron magnetic circular dichroism in 2006.

Life

Peter Schattschneider completed his diploma degree in Physics in 1973 at the Vienna University of Technology, with a thesis entitled X-ray diffusion profiles in thin layers. In 1976 he successfully defended at the same university his PhD thesis on The determination of lattice constants of binary alloys from X-ray diffraction profiles. From 1974 to 1977 he was also enrolled at the University of Vienna where he obtained a mag. rer. nat. degree in the college teaching of Physics and Mathematics. After working for a few years on air- and spaceborn sensors in a private engineering enterprise, he returned to his alma mater in 1980 as assistant in the Institute for Applied and Technical Physics, where he became Assistant Professor in 1988.
In 1978 he published his first Science Fiction story and afterwards has published other stories in Anthologies and Magazines.
From 1992 to 1993 he worked at the CNRS in Paris. Since 1995 he is an invited professor at the École Centrale Paris. From 2000 to 2006 he was the head of the newly established University Service for Transmission Electron Microscopy at the Vienna University of Technology. Although he officially retired in 2015, he is still an active researcher. In October 2016 he received a decoration from the Vienna University of Technology for "his research on electron energy loss spectroscopy and the development of the theoretical foundations in the fields of ELNES, EMCD and most recently electron vortex beams".

Awards

as Author

;Novels
;Short stories
;Non-fiction books