Philip Hofmann came to Tennessee on a Lynen Research Fellowship of the Alexander v. Humboldt Stiftuing in 1995 and stayed for two years. He received a Ph.D in 1994 from the Fritz-Haber-Institute der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin. He received the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max-Planck-Society for his thesis work in 1995. Much of his thesis was associated with the use of photoelectron diffraction to determine the structure of atoms and molecules on surfaces. One of his early contributions was published in Nature:

• Direct Indentification of Atomic and Molecular Adsorption sites using Photoelectron Diffraction, Ph. Hofmann, K. M. Schindler, S. Bao, A. M. Bradshaw and D. P. Woodruff, Nature 368, 131 (1994).

Philip’s research while he was in Tennessee centered on the structural, electronic and vibrational properties of Be surfaces. Three of the most cited papers are:

• The Electronic Structure of , Ph. Hofmann, R. Stumpf, V. M. Silkin, E.V. Chulkov, and E. W. Plummer, Surf. Sci. Lett. 355, L278 (1996).


• Anisotropic two-dimensional Friedel oscillations, Ph. Hofmann, B. G. Briner, M. Doering, H.-P. Rust, E. W. Plummer, A. M. Bradshaw, Phys. Rev. Letters, 79, 265-268 (1997).
• The Geometric Structure of Be(1010), (Ph. Hofmann, K. Pohl, R. Stumpf and E. W. Plummer), Phys. Rev B. 53, 13715 (1996).

In 1997 Philip returned to Berlin to work as a group leader at the Fritz-Haber-Institute in the department of Professor Alex Bradshaw. In 1998 he moved to the University of Aarhus (http://www.phys.au.dk/main/person/uk/individ/philip.shtm). He has continued to work on different aspects of surface science using synchrotron radiation. A current interest is electron-phonon coupling at metal surfaces.

• Electron-lattice interaction on -Ga(010), Ph. Hofmann, Y. Cai, Ch. Grütter, and J. H. Bilgram, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 1670 (1998).


• Strong energy dependence of the electron-phonon coupling strength on Bi(100), J. E. Gayone, S. V. Hoffmann, Z. Li, and Ph. Hofmann, Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 127601 (2003).