Christian Joas

photograph of Christian Joas

Director
Niels Bohr Archive
University of Copenhagen

Visitor address:
Niels Bohr Archive
University of Copenhagen
Niels Bohr Building
Office 02.1.G.102 (Building 2, 1st floor, G tower, office 102)
Jagtvej 155
DK-2200 Copenhagen

Postal address:
Niels Bohr Archive
University of Copenhagen
Jagtvej 128
DK-2200 Copenhagen

Associate Professor of History of 20th Century Science
Department of Science Education
University of Copenhagen
homepage at Department of Science Education

Contact:

E-mail: joas@nbi.ku.dk
Tel. no.: + 45 353-34654
Location: Niels Bohr Building, office 02.1.G.102

Research Areas:

History of science, history of modern physics, history of quantum physics, history of many-body physics.

Concise CV:

  • since 2019: Associate Professor of History of 20th Century Science, Research Group on History and Philosophy of Science and Science Studies, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen
  • since 2017: Director, Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen
  • 2012–2017: Assistant Professor, History Department, LMU Munich
  • 2015–2016: Research Fellow, Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen
  • 2009–2012: Research Scholar, Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Berlin
  • 2007–2009: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
  • 2007: PhD in theoretical physics (Dr. rer. nat.), Freie University Berlin

Professional Activities, Awards, Editorial Positions, Conference Committees:

  • 2023: Host of the Fifth Biennial Early-Career Conference for Historians of the Physical Sciences, to be held in Copenhagen from 31 August to 3 September 2023.
  • 2023: Main organizer (together with Emil Bjerrum-Bohr and Amin Doostmohammadi, Niels Bohr International Academy, Copenhagen) of the Centennial Conference “Crossing the Disciplinary Boundaries of Physics” to be held in Copenhagen from 7–11 August 2023.
  • 2022: Member of the Board of the international conference “Open World: Open Science and Global Dangers” held in Copenhagen (Denmark), 10–11 November 2022.
  • since 2019: Editor of the journal Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte/History of Science and Humanities.
  • since 2019: Member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for History of Science, Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm (Sweden).
  • since 2019: Member of the International Advisory Board (Fachbeirat) for the permanent exhibition “Light and Matter” (together with Wolfgang Ketterle, Theodor Hänsch, Markus Greiner, and Rudolf Gross), Deutsches Museum, Munich (Germany).
  • 2019: Host of the conference “Diplomats in Science Diplomacy: Promoting Scientific and Technological Collaboration in International Relations,” Copenhagen, 19–20 July 2019.
  • since 2018: Member of the Board of the Danish Society for the History of Science (since 2023: Vice-President)
  • 2017: Scientific Organizer (together with Thiago Hartz) of the Symposium Quantum Cultures: Historical Perspectives on the Practices of Quantum Physicists at ICHST 2017 (25th International Congress of History of Science and Technology, Rio de Janeiro, July 2017).
  • since 2017: Member of the Editorial Board, European Physical Journal H.
  • since 2017: Member of the Board of the Commission for the History of Physics, Division of History of Science and Technology, IUHPS.
  • 2016: Deutsches Museum Publication Award, awarded for: J. James and C. Joas, “Subsequent and Subsidiary? Rethinking the Role of Applications in Establishing Quantum Mechanics,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 45, no. 5 (2015): 641–702.
  • 2015: European Physical Journal epj.org Distinguished Referee 2015
  • 2015: Member of the Scientific Committee: “HQ-4: Fourth Conference on History of Quantum Physics,” Donostia/San Sebastian (Spain), 16 to 18 July, 2015.
  • 2014: Member of the Organizing Committee: “Global Science, Global Technology, Global Impacts: A Conference for Graduate Students and Early-Career Scholars,” American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD (USA), 30 March to 1 April, 2014.
  • 2013: Scientific organizer: Workshop “Transfer of Knowledge Across Disciplinary Boundaries,” Munich, 11 to 12 October, 2013.
  • 2013: Member of the Organizing Committee: “17th UK and European Meeting on the Foundations of Physics,” Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Munich (Germany), 29 to 31 July, 2013.
  • 2013: Scientific organizer, together with Christian Forstner, of the 15th History of Physics Conference, History of Physics Division of the German Physical Society, “Transfer of Knowledge in Physics,” Jena (Germany), 25 February to 1 March, 2013.
  • 2012: Scientific organizer, together with Alexander S. Blum, Kostas Gavroglu, and Jürgen Renn, of the conference “Towards a history of the history of science: 50 years since Kuhn’s Structure,” Berlin (Germany), 17 to 20 October, 2012.
  • 2011–2012: Coordinator of the Joint Weekly Colloquium of the Physics Department of Freie University Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.
  •  2011–2021: Section Editor (History) of the journal Annalen der Physik (Wiley), responsible for historical submissions and the section “Then & Now” (together with Dieter Hoffmann).
  •  2011–2019: Member of the Board of the History of Physics Division of the German Physical Society.
  • 2011: Member of the Organizing Committee: “Continuity and Discontinuity in the Physical Sciences Since the Enlightenment. A Conference for Graduate Students and Early-Career Scholars,” American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD (USA), 28 to 31 July, 2011.
  • 2010: Member of the Organizing Committee: “HQ-3 Third International Conference on the History of Quantum Physics,” Berlin, 28 June to 2 July, 2010.
  • 2008: Exhibition “Max Planck—The Reluctant Revolutionary” (“Max Planck – Revolutionär wider Willen”), Deutsches Technik Museum (German Museum of Technology), Berlin.

Memberships

Selected Publications

  • Olival Freire Jr, Guido Bacciagaluppi, Olivier Darrigol, Thiago Hartz, Christian Joas, Alexei Kojevnikov, Osvaldo Pessoa Jr (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). Online.

  • Christian Joas, “Foundations and applications: The creative tension in the early development of quantum mechanics,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Quantum Interpretations, ed. Olival Freire Jr, Guido Bacciagaluppi, Olivier Darrigol, Thiago Hartz, Christian Joas, Alexei Kojevnikov, Osvaldo Pessoa Jr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 173–201. Online.

  • Sara Green, Hanne Andersen, Kristian Danielsen, Claus Emmeche, Christian Joas, Mikkel Willum Johansen, C. Nagayoshi, Joeri Witteveen, and Henrik Kragh Sørensen, “Adapting practice-based philosophy of science to teaching of science students,” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 11, 75 (2021). Online.

  • Christian Joas, “Kvantemekanikkens oprindelse (1925–1927),” Kvant – tidsskrift for fysik og astronomi 32, no. 2 (2021): 14–20. Online.

  • Christian Joas and Thiago Hartz, special issue “Quantum Cultures: Historical Perspectives on the Practices of Quantum Physicists,” Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte/History of Science and Humanities 42, no. 4 (2019). Online.

  • Michael Eckert and Christian Joas, “Arnold Sommerfeld and Condensed Matter Physics,” Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 8 (2017), 31–49. Online.

  • Alexander S. Blum and Christian Joas, “From Dressed Electrons to Quasiparticles: The Emergence of Emergent Entities in Quantum Field Theory,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 53 (2016): 1–8. Online.

  • Alexander S. Blum, Kostas Gavroglu, Christian Joas, and Jürgen Renn, eds., Shifting Paradigms: Thomas S. Kuhn and the History of Science (Berlin: Edition Open Access, 2016). Online (open access).

  • Jeremiah James and Christian Joas, “Subsequent and Subsidiary? Rethinking the Role of Applications in Establishing Quantum Mechanics,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 45, no. 5 (2015): 641–70. Online.

  • Christian Joas and Georges Waysand, “Superconductivity—a Challenge to Modern Physics,” in The history of artificial cold. Scientific, cultural and technological issues, ed. Kostas Gavroglu (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 83–92. Online.

    Johannes Knolle and Christian Joas, “The Physics of Cold in the Cold War,” in The history of artificial cold. Scientific, cultural and technological issues, ed. Kostas Gavroglu (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 119–132. Online.

  • Xinguo Ren, Patrick Rinke, Christian Joas, Matthias Scheffler, “Random-Phase Approximation and Its Applications in Computational Chemistry and Materials Science,” Journal of Materials Science 47 (2012): 7447–7471. Online.

  • Christian Joas and Shaul Katzir, “Analogy, extension, and novelty: Young Schrödinger on electric phenomena in solids,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 42 (2011): 43–53. Online.

    Christian Joas and Christoph Lehner, “The classical roots of wave mechanics: Schrödinger’s transformations of the optical-mechanical analogy,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 40 (2009): 338–351. Online.

  • Christian Joas, Christoph Lehner, and Jürgen Renn, eds., HQ-1 : Conference on the History of Quantum Physics, Volumes 1 and 2 (Berlin: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2008). Online.

  • Yehonatan Elon, Sven Gnutzmann, Christian Joas, and Uzy Smilansky, “Geometric characterization of nodal domains: the area-to-perimeter ratio,” Journal Of Physics A-Mathematical And Theoretical 40 (2007): 2689–2707. Online.

    Christian Joas, Jürgen Dietel, and Felix von Oppen, “Microwave photoconductivity of a modulated two-dimensional electron gas due to intra-Landau-level transitions,” Physical Review B 72 (2005): 165323. Online.

    Christian Joas, Mikhail E. Raikh, and Felix von Oppen, “Parametric resonance of a two-dimensional electron gas under bichromatic irradiation,” Physical Review B: 70 (2004): 235302. Online.

    Christian Joas, Ilya Eremin, Dirk Manske, and Karl-Heinz Bennemann, “Theory for Phonon-Induced Superconductivity in MgB2,” Physical Review B 65 (2002): 132518. Online.