Hendrik Schon: Physicist Or Fraud

The scandal of Hendrik Schon is probably the most fascinating one that has surfaced lately in the field of physics.

Jan Hendrik Schon was born in 1970 and hails from Germany. He is a physicist who earned worldwide recognition and fame for his research and breakthroughs especially in the branch of nanotechnology. After a series of investigations all those breakthroughs turned out to be hoax. In 1997, after receiving his Ph.D. from University of Konstanz, he was employed by Bell Labs.

In 2001, Schon published his research in Nature magazine. In his research, Schon claimed that he had manufactured a transistor on molecular level. He explained that he used a slim layer of organic dye molecules to produce a virtual electric circuit which would behave as a transistor when current is passed through it.

Schon’s research work was termed as a huge breakthrough as it would start a new era of transistor manufacturing based on organic electronics rather than the traditional silicon technology. The implications would have been of immense proportions as it would have helped radically reduce the size and cost of electronic chips.

Due to his efforts Hendrik Schon was awarded the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize and the Braunschweig Prize in 2001. In 2002, he received the Outstanding Young Investigator Award by the Materials Research Society.

Soon after the publications of Schon’s research, the scientists in the physics community began questioning Schon’s experiments and results. A professor of Princeton University detected that Schon’s two experiments conducted at different temperatures had same results. Some other physicists also noticed carbon copy results of different experiments which casted a doubt on the credibility of the research. And so after a series of allegations Lucent Technologies decided to launch an official investigation of Schon’s claims.

In September 2002, the inquiry commission presented its report and claimed that Schon was found guilty of misconduct on 24 instances. They also suggested that the results have been reused in different experiments and even some of the data was not even generated from observations rather they were mathematically calculated.

Schon in turn claimed that he has in some cases exaggerated the results but he definitely got similar results. He also accepted that some of the mistakes in his research would have been unintentional.

After the becoming public of the report all of Schon’s research papers were withdrawn and his degree was cancelled by University of Konstanz. He appealed against the verdict but was rejected last year in October.