Background
Peterlin was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Peterlin was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
After receiving his Doctorate. Science in physics from Alexander von Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany in 1938, Peterlin accepted in 1939 the chair as a professor of physics at the University of Ljubljana, where he remained for 22 years. Besides his pedagogical duties, he accepted in 1947 the position of the founding director of the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. In 1960, Peterlin left his home country.
In order to be able to continue his theoretical research on macromolecules he accepted the position of a full professor and head of the Institute of Physics at the Technical University of Munich, Germany.
Only a year later he relocated to North Carolina where he was entrusted with the directorship of the newly founded Camille Dreyfus Laboratory at the Research Triangle Institute, which was almost entirely devoted to basic research on polymers. He also served as adjunct professor at Duke University.
Upon his mandatory retirement in 1973 at age 65, Peterlin left for Washington, District of Columbia to become a senior scientist at the National Bureau of Standards, now National Institute of Science and Technology, a post he held until 1984. Anton Peterlin was an internationally acclaimed scientist, the author of nearly 400 scholarly publications.
Anton Peterlin died in Ljubljana.
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts]
A specialist in polymers, Peterlin was a member of numerous scientific societies, including the American Physical Society, the Deutsche Kolloid Gesellschaft, the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, and the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.