Walter Selke

Who is Walter Selke?

Walter Selke is a German retired professor for Theoretical Physics at the RWTH Aachen.

After having received his doctoral degree at the University of Hanover, followed by postdoctoral positions at the Saarland University, Cornell University, and Boston University, he became in 1981 a permanent scientific staff member of Forschungszentrum Jülich. He held a similar position at the IBM Research Center in 1985/1986. Since 1996 he is a university professor at the RWTH Aachen, and he is also, since 2008, engaged in the "Jülich Aachen Research Alliance".

His main field of expertise is Statistical Physics, with applications, especially, to magnetism and surface physics. He is best known for his work on commensurate and incommensurate spatially modulated superstructures in solids, with realizations in magnets, ferroelectrics, alloys and adsorbate systems.

He has published about 150 scientific papers in journals, conference proceedings, monographs and books, including many review articles. Among his coauthors are Kurt Binder, Michael E. Fisher, and Valery Pokrovsky.