The debye is a CGS unit of electric dipole moment named in honour of the physicist Peter J. W. Debye. Likely the earliest recommendation for the Debye as a unit was in the Physikalisch-chemisches Taschenbuch written by Carl Drucker and Erich Proskauer in early 1932. It is defined as 10−18 statcoulomb-centimetres. Historically the debye was defined as the dipole moment resulting from two charges of opposite sign but an equal magnitude of 10−10 statcoulomb, which were separated by 1 ångström. This gave a convenient unit for molecular dipole moments.