Peter M. Rentzepis

Peter Michael Rentzepis (born 11 December 1934) is a Greek-born American physical chemist.

A native of Kalamata born on 11 December 1934,[2] Rentzepis attended the 1st Lykion in his hometown and graduated from Denison University and Syracuse University in the United States before pursuing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, graduating in 1963.[3][4] Rentzepis, who joined Bell Labs in 1963, after two years at General Electric,[5] led the physical and inorganic chemistry research department at Bell between 1973 and 1985, and taught at University of California, Irvine from 1974 to 2014,[3] serving in a presidential chair professorship from 1985.[4]  In 2014, Rentzepis was appointed TEES Distinguished Professor at Texas A&M University.[3]

He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1972,[6] and a member of the United States National Academy of Science in 1978.[7][8] He won the 1982 Peter Debye Award from the American Chemical Society,[9] followed in 1989 by the Irving Langmuir Award from the American Physical Society,[10] and in 2001 by the Tolman Award of the ACS Southern California Section.[4]