Anneke Sengers

Johanna M.H. Levelt Sengers
Scientist Emeritus
Thermophysical Properties Division
Material Measurements Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 8320
Gaithersburg, MD 20877, USA
Phone 001-301-975-2463
Email: johanna.sengers@nist.gov
URL: http://www.nist.gov/mml/properties/Levelt-Sengers.cfm
Member:  US National Academy of Sciences

Johanna (Anneke) M.H. Levelt was born and raised in the Netherlands.  She completed her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands, obtaining her doctorate in physics in 1958.  In 1963, she and her husband, Jan Sengers, emigrated to the United States.  She joined the US National Bureau of Standards, later renamed National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). She was a Group Leader from 1979 through 1987 and became a NIST Fellow in 1984.  She is presently a scientist emeritus at NIST.  As a research physicist, Levelt Sengers woked with  her collaborators on critical phenomena in fluids and fluid mixtures, from theory to experiment, and developed databases for practical application. They developed critical-region scaling concepts for fluids and fluid mixtures, and for solubility behavior near a solvent's critical point. They also performed measurements of density, phase behavior and other properties of industrially important fluids such as carbon dioxide, ethylene, water and geothermal fluids. She held leadership positions and is a Honorary Fellow of the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam, which serves the electric power industry. She has published extensively in the archival literature, and contributed 14 book chapters.

Her honors include:  member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the US National Academy of Engineering, correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and an honorary doctorate from Technical University Delft, Netherlands. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At NIST, she worked with foreign postdoctoral researchers and guest scientists from Argentina, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Russia. She lectured in these countries as well as in Belgium, Canada, France, Mexico, Norway, and Spain.  She spent a semester at Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum in Germany on an Alexander von Humboldt grant, and was a visiting researcher at various universities in the Netherlands. She was elected the L’Oreal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” 2003 Laureate for North America. In 2004/05, she co-chaired the Advisory Panel “Women for Science” of the InterAcademy Council.  In 2010, IANAS appointed her Chair of its new Women-for-Science Working Group.     

June, 2011